I do not consider any of your "points" to be more than insults or childish misdirection.
That's because you don't understand, them. My points are not points that I invented. They are points brought up by many great philosophers in the debate over the nature of consciousness that has literally taken place over thousands of years.
If we want to make an artificial consciousness we obviously need to understand a bit about the physiological nature of consciousness.
We do understand a *bit* about consciousness. There have been several experiments done that dispel a lot of myths about how consciousness works.
Otherwise it's merely a "cargo cult" copy that is just pretending to be the real thing.
The case where we create a fake, and it is easily spotted as a fake is a trivial case where we can all agree it is not conscious.
If we can't recognize a "fake", then maybe it's not a fake. Or maybe it is a fake and we are all "fakes" too.
Definition themselves aren't testable. We get to define them. That's what makes it a definition. You can use science to see if things fit a definition.
Science doesn't dictate what we define as consciousness. It is only the tool we use to determine if something meets the criteria we decide on for consciousness.
For example: Which animals should be called cats is not a scientific question. Whether a particular animal meets the criteria for what we have previously agreed to call a cat is a scientific question.
The goal of science is to find the truth. The goal of philosophy is to figure out the right questions to ask. In the field of AI, it is the job of philosophy to define what a relevant and coherent definition of consciousness is, and it is the job of science to determine which things in the world meet that definition.
Any reasonable person looking at the rate of progress in technology will say that it has been increasing at an exponential rate. Humans have existed for a few hundred thousand years (depending on how you define human).
We went through most of human history with only primitive hand tools. Then we had a few thousand years of civilization, with inventions like agriculture, catapults, aqueducts, etc.
The first aircraft was 100 years ago. Now we can travel in space. The first computer was 70 years ago, and now we have computers that are several orders of magnitude more powerful.
Maybe there is no more progress to be made in silicon chips. There was probably not much more progress to be made with catapults either. Technology as a whole is still exponential. Will it stay that way forever? I have no idea, but I don't think it's so crazy to think that it will keep growing exponentially for the foreseeable future.
We made the first quantum computer in 2008, maybe that's the way to get past barriers in classical computers.
No.
First we need to define consciousness.
Then we get to decide if something fits the definition or not.
I really do not understand why you are acting as if you are unable to grasp that point. Is this some sort of debating trick?
Who is the *we* that gets to decide the definition of conscious? It is going to be pretty hard if not impossible to come up with a consensus on something like this. Does this mean that we cannot even consider humans to be conscious because we don't have an agreed upon definition? No of course not. Whatever definition we come up with, it had better include humans, or it's meaningless.
We *don't* need to fully define consciousness to determine if *some* thing is conscious. (e.g. humans)
We *do* need to fully define consciousness to determine if *any* thing is conscious. (e.g. rocks, animals, current computers, etc)
Do humans get to be considered automatically conscious simply because they are humans (however that is defined)? No. There are properties of that most humans have that are the reasons we consider humans to be conscious. I am suggesting that meaningful human interaction is the single most important property for this. What do I mean by meaningful human interaction? I mean having a computer as a best friend or be in love with a computer.
Let me give a more exaggerated explanation of the Turing test:
Do you think it will *ever* be possible to have a computer as a best friend, or love a computer like a family member? Could you ever be as sad if a computer was destroyed as if your own child was killed?
If you say no, then you are essentially saying you think a computer will never pass the Turing test. This is fine with me, because my claim is only *if" a computer can pass the Turing test.
If you say yes, then what you are saying is that you could lose your best friend or family member feel just as sad, and still this "person" was not a real person because they were a computer not a biological human. This would be an example of something passing the Turing test but still not being conscious.
This is exaggerated to make a point. I think computers will be conscious well before they pass the Turing test. Even if computers pass the Turing test, they may not be able to be your best friend or family member. Most other humans do not get to be your best friend either. The Turing test is meant to be an over the top example of a machine that is *definitely* conscious by any reasonable definition. Whether such an artificial machine can/will ever exist we can debate.
By Turing logic, if I can make you think a steaming pile of shit is a steak dinner, and you eat it, then even though you at shit to **you** it actually was a steak dinner.
A pile of shit is always a pile of shit, wether or not **you** think it's a steak dinner.
I don't think this is a good example, but I will try to work with it.
It's more like this. If you could take all the atoms in the pile of shit and change them into a configuration close enough to a steak that a person can not tell the difference between a "real steak" and a steak that used to be a pile of shit. His logic is that if nobody can tell the difference, then it doesn't matter that it used to be a pile of shit, it's a steak now.
**according to which human???** this is the opposite of science.
According to a bunch of humans. You can do the experiment with as many people as you want. Lots of science involves testing humans. They can figure out which parts of the brain do what by asking people to think of certain things while they are being scanned by an MRI. Which humans do they use? A whole bunch of them. I really don't see why you are fixated on this part. It is not the opposite of science.
It's about structure & function not being able to fool some dumbass.
what if it could fool you?
t's a stupid, facile, completely arbitrary goalpost...it's whatever you want to make up...it's **not verifyable** and therefore not scientific
It is not an arbitrary goalpost. It is actually a goal post that was intended to be so hard to satisfy that Turing thought nobody could dispute that something was conscious if it passed this test. In fact there are probably going to be things that are conscious that can not pass the turing test. The turing test is intended to serve as undeniable indicator of intelligence/consciousness (at least relative to humans). What he did not expect was that so many people would completely underestimate how hard this test is to pass.
It is absolutely verifiable. You just use statistics. Take a sample of 1000 people and have them be judges and contestants in the turing test and see if a machine is as likely to be voted human as a real human. I don't see whats so unscientific about this.
It's bullshit to define "machinic life" as anything that can cause a human to think it's "alive"
It's not about being alive. It's about being intelligent/conscious. Lots of things are alive, and they are not intelligent/conscious.
I am getting the impression that you really don't know a lot about Turing or the Turing Test. I would suggest you read about it some more before you make a judgement.
The current rate of progress is exponential. That doesn't mean that AI is right around the corner, but it does mean that when it happens, it may sneak up on us (i.e. we may not see it coming until it is upon us).
exactly the problem. the "turning test" is a facile demonstration...not a scientific "test" at all.
The question of how to measure consciousness is not *only* a scientific one. It is more a philosophical question. It has a scientific component to it which is why it is important that humans are prevented from seeing the subjects or hearing their "voice". It is a thought experiment detailing a scientific experiment to that could conclusively prove a machine was as intelligent as a human. Since human intelligence is best measured by human perception, the test uses human perception to make the evaluation in a scientific way.
We can have scientific tests about human perception. We can determine if people prefer coke or pepsi scientifically.
Do yourself a favor and ignore Turing completely when thinking about computing.
This is like saying we should ignore Einstein when thinking about physics. Besides, it is not about the man, but the insight that is gained by what Turing proposed. If you have gained no insight into computing from Turing, I would say you are either the most brilliant computer scientist that ever existed or that maybe you didn't understand his ideas.
I didn't say it would make it "intelligent"...it would do just as I said, give it legal rights. Just as giving Commander Data legal rights doesn't make it any more or less "human"...confering rights doesn't change the molecules of the thing.
How were bringing up legal rights relevant to the conversation on intelligence then?
Your analogy is ridiculous b/c it is irrational. If a being like Data was created, which mimics human thought on the most basic level (which, as TFA describes, we don't even have the theory to contexualize such a thing, let alone the ability to make it)...if we made it, there would be a ration question of what kind of rights it has.
My argument is not irrational. Yes it's true that rocks aren't intelligent, but that's why my argument has an "if" in it.
It's rational to ask if Data should have rights if he existed...it's not rational to ask if a rock should have rights. Your analogy fails.
Why is not rational? I am saying that what makes something worthy of human rights is whether it can pass some variation of the turing test. I am not saying that rocks can pass the test. I am saying that *if* by some bizarre circumstance a rock existed that could pass the turing test, then we would have no choice but to accept that it is intelligent and as worthy of rights as any other human.
The reason to give data rights when he asks for them is that this is an example of passing the turing test. We would not give rights to a computer program that simply prints "please give me rights" every 2 seconds. The fact that it is more convincing (to human perception) when data asks for rights is what makes the difference.
This is in contrast to alternatives like "human rights should only be given to carbon based life forms with human genomes, because these are the only things known to have of consciousness".
Both the "turing test" and "intelligence" are matters of ****HUMAN PERCEPTION****
Whatever thought is, I'm sure it's not going to be dependent on some property of carbon atoms that silicon atoms don't have.
If we can't do that how do we know if it's really thinking or just something complex enough that it looks like it
What you are referring to is the idea of a philosophical zombie (or p-zombie). It is true that we would not be able to tell if a computer was conscious or just a p-zombie. I think descartes "I think therefore I am" is a pretty convincing argument to convince yourself that you are conscious. But it doesn't work on other humans. They might just be p-zombies too. How do you decide that other humans are really conscious? Whatever it is, I would say that once a computer can pass this test, it is only fair to assume it is conscious as well.
Brains in general, human brains included, do not process information. They generate consciousness.
Brains *do* process information. They *also* generate consciousness. I would argue that they generate consciousness *by* processing information.
They do this in ways that neuroscientists still don't understand. As a neuroscientist I can say this without hesitation.
We don't understand how consciousness is generated. That doesn't mean we can't make it happen. The Wright brothers made a working airplane before everything was figured about about aerodynamics. Many aeodynamic principles were at play in the Wright Flyer that the Wright brothers didn't understand, but they knew enough to make it happen.
Maybe humans don't know how consciousness works. But we know how evolution works. And evolution generated consciousness. We may not be able to make consciousness directly, but we may be able to make something that can make consciousness in a way we don't understand.
Silicon chips are not alive, and will never generate consciousness as we now understand it.
In order to make something conscious, the parts need to be "alive"?! Well we know that's not true. Humans are conscious. They are made of cells. The cells are made of proteins that are not alive. Humans are ultimately made of quarks and leptons. None of which are alive or conscious. Clearly living things and consciousness can be made from parts that are not themselves living or conscious.
A government can grant civil rights to a rock. That doesn't make it intelligent. If you can have a conversation with a rock then it is intelligent no matter what the government says. It seemed like data was capable of a conversation. Maybe he was on the cusp of being able to pass the turing test.
The material (silicon) doesn't matter. Only the architecture matters. The difference between a human brain and a typical laptop is not the material it's made of. It is that the laptop is designed from the top down, with most of the computation happening in a central location (or a few locations). A human brain is a massively parallel computer with computation happening in every neuron.
If we just add more silicon chips we can have more parallel computing. They don't even need to be near eachother. Computers already transfer information about 6 orders of magnitude faster than neurons. We could have computers 200 miles apart that send each other information faster than 2 neurons on opposite sides of the same brain. And we can fit a lot of silicon chips in a 200 mile radius.
machines cannot do anything without direct, explicit directions - told to it by a human.
Everything a computer does is a result of it's programming and input. The same could be said of a human. The only difference is that the programming in a human is a result of natural selection, and the programming in a computer is a result of intelligent design (by a human which was indirectly a result of natural selection).
In the same way that a computer can not do anything that it's programming does not allow, a human can not do anything that his/her brain does not allow. It's true that human brains allow a lot of things that current computer programs don't, but you could in principle make a computer program do anything that a neuron could do. It's all just matter and energy.
That's the definition of stupid to me: unable to do a thing without having to all spelled out to you.
computers have low level instructions and high level instructions. The existence of low level instructions does not mean that there are *only* low level instructions. Just because the human brain has neurons that work by electric potentials doesn't mean that we can be considered to *only* do what is spelled out by the electron potentials in our neurons. Or maybe it does mean that, but it should be the same for both humans and computers. There is a higher level model that governs the behavior of humans. By the same token there is a higher level model that governs computers as well. "Find me the shortest directions from L.A. to New York" is a higher level instruction than "add 2 numbers". It may not be currently as advanced as humans, but it is growing exponentially.
A computer not only has software (i.e. the instructions), but also hardware to actually execute the instructions in a reliable way. For the 1950's library to be considered "a computer" you would have to include the librarian (or regular person) who actually follows the instructions of the lookup system to retrieve the information, and even then whether this is a "reliable" method of execution is debatable.
In fact you could in theory make any computer that is only instructions written on paper (e.g. copy data from this memory address to that memory address, add this memory address to that memory address and store it in a third memory address, etc) and have a human being carry out those instructions. If we knew enough about neurobiology we could probably simulate the human brain on a computer that was simulated by a human being following instructions, but it might take the human being an entire lifetime to advance the simulation by 1 nanosecond or something.
Having the computations be executed by a computer just speeds things up by several orders of magnitude. And having the instruction in electronic form instead of on paper allows the computer to more easily read the instructions. Computers also make fewer mistakes. The software can be much simpler if it is not required to withstand damage (i.e. bit flips).
1. It's still cherry picking data if someone points out that the one piece of data you picked is an anomaly and is not representative of the data as a whole, and you just disregard it. That's one of the reasons you are supposed to use lots of samples to prevent stuff like this from happening. Cherry picking usually involves carefully selecting your data so all your samples falsely indicate some predetermined conclusion. If you only pick one sample to base your conclusion on, not only is it cherry picking, but bad cherry picking.
2. If we look at data from June 2008 to may 2009 the USD stayed the same and the australian dollar lost 33% of it's value. Why is 2009 - 2011 a better time to pull a single sample to base a conclusion on than 2008 to 2009? I didn't cherry pick this data. I picked it *then* looked. I did however look at a bunch of other bits of data first that didn't really fit what I was saying. But when I picked this range, and *then* looked, it did a really good job of proving my point so I kept it.
3. 2009 - 2011 is not "the economic crisis". It actually began in late 2007.
Before throwing around phrases like "intellectually dishonest" consider what you are doing.
You probably actually have to know what you are doing to be intellectually dishonest. So maybe intellectually dishonest was a bit too harsh.
One person picks a time frame of economic crisis because that is when volatility is the most severe, then looks at data. Another person rejects that timeframe because the data is contrary to their position. You sure you want to discuss intellectual honesty?
It's more like one person chooses the one of the only possible sample to base a conclusion on that proves his point. The other person points out that this is an anomaly and suggests that the whole data set should be used. The first person comes up with some irrational reason why this one sample is better than the others.
You sure you want to discuss intellectual honesty?
You're a fucking idiot. I'm done with this discussion.
1. The scale doesn't matter. If for example the australian dollar was worth 10 USD, you'd expect the absolute volatility of the USD to be 10x as much. If it was 10x as much in absolute terms then that means it is the same relative volatility. This is why a $1 stock going up a dollar is a big deal and Google stock going up a dollar is not.
2. This graph does not show even show the USD being 6x as volatile as the australian dollar in absolute terms. They way they have scaled it actually highlights that their relative volatility is almost the same. Even the absolute volatility is minimal. It looks like only a factor of about 20%
You are absolutely cherry picking data. You are selecting a peak and comparing it to a valley at a later date to show a lack of change. This is intellectually dishonest and would be rejected by any sort of peer review process if was interpreted this way in a journal. These are not the sorts of things you are allowed to do in statistics.
Volatility means erratic change. Both the graph for the gold price in USD and australian dollars show approximately the same level of volatility.
If you replaced the graph for the USD with a straight line that went from the bottom left to the upper right of the graph, it would make the dollar a very poor investment related to gold, but there wouldn't be any volatility. It would indicate that the price of the dollar was gradually and predictably rising (e.g. due to gradual and predictable inflation).
The jaggedness of the line is the volatility. Both the USD and australian dollar are jagged, but not only that their jaggedness actually aligns quite well. If you subtracted one curve from the other, you'd find a more smooth line as a result. The fact that 2 different currencies show the same pattern indicates that the bulk of the volatility is in gold.
volatility is more than just how much something changes. It also includes how much the rate of change changes.
Volatility isn't always bad. I'd rather have something that was increasing in value in a volatile way than having something else that was decreasing in value in a very predictable way.
The downside to volatility is that it creates uncertainty, and uncertainty carries risk. If you can have confidence in what is going to happen, then you can make better decisions. Investing in gold carries a lot of short/medium term risk, but tends to be a good long term investment.
When we have an economic crisis and everyone flocks to gold, driving the price up sharply in a short amount of time, this is not a sign of stability for gold. This is a source of volatility. It is good for people who already had gold, but that's different than stability.
From what you've written, it almost sounds as if you are a pantheist rather than a theist.
In addition to being a theist are you also a proponent of a particular religion (e.g. Christianity)?
I see a lot of flaws in your deductions. But the main one seems to be that your argument for God is just a prime mover argument, which I find utterly unconvincing. Truth and raw materials couldn't come from nothing so the only other possibility is God? Where did God come from? Why isn't God subject to this same line of reasoning? If you believe that God was eternal, then by the same logic, the universe could be eternal. Surely an uncreated universe is easier to swallow than an uncreated God, especially if you believe that it takes a really intelligent thing (God) to create a not as smart thing (the universe and people).
Another mistakes I feel you are making, is the assumption that something can't come from nothing. While this may seem like common sense, we already know that common sense is not the way the universe works. Common sense is what humans evolved to survive, but common sense doesn't apply to relativity or quantum mechanics. Common sense is not a proper substitute for consistency, and the way the universe works consistently contradicts our intuition.
If you think the whole universe *is* God, why does that make God dead? A bunch of cells *is* me, and I'm not dead.
The idea that God killed himself to create all of us so that we could all be Gods, seems very narcissistic. It is easy to fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing things. Even there were a creator of the universe, to assume that he would have the same value system of wanting to procreate and to have a willingness to die to procreate is pretty far fetched. We are a product of evolution. We have been naturally selected to procreate. Procreation is worth dying to *us* because we are the genetic children of expert procreators. Surely you don't think the God you are imagining is not a product of this same evolutionary process.
I understand the desire to believe that we are here for a purpose or some grand mission. What could be more grand than a mission from our cosmic father God? I also see the pointlessness of a mission with a predetermined outcome. However this is all just wishful thinking. I don't see any reason that suggests that it *must* be this way or is even remotely likely to be this way. I would love it if we all went to heaven. Wouldn't it be great if we didn't have to die or ever be separated from those we love? This has no bearing on whether any of it is true.
And that's why I am worried for the field of science if indeed you are a scientist. It is not an ad hominem attack. An ad hominem attack would be "Your ideas are stupid because you are a priest". I am not attacking your ideas because of who you are (this is what an ad hominem attack is). In fact I am attacking your ideas. It is your ideas that make me question who you are.
I sort of have an expectation of scientists to be expert logicians who are only swayed by hard evidence rather than things like wishful thinking.
I certainly don't mind you tossing around ideas. In fact I give you credit for your creativity. I think what you have come up with is better than just about any religious creation story I've heard of. I think you're version is better than anything Moses, Jesus, Mohammad, Joseph Smith, or L Ron Hubbard came up with. I do, however feel that your way if thinking is not the sort of mindset I would expect or want a scientist to have.
If I were sorting something alphabetically, I would do radix sort to sort everything by letter, then I do insertion sort on each pile.
I studied computer science too, but I think the overhead of doing a sort with better time complexity actually is a significant hindrance for me to actually use it in practice. I'm never going to sort more than like a hundred things (because I'm lazy), and a computer is never going to take longer than a second to sort a million things. So it makes sense for me to use the sort with lowest overhead and for a computer to use a sort with the best time complexity.
That said, I might do a merge sort the next time I have to sort something just to make it more entertaining.
By asking you whether you believe in quantum mechanics, I would cause your superposition to collapse into one of the two states, because I am effectively performing a measurement.
Slashdot Mirror
I do not consider any of your "points" to be more than insults or childish misdirection.
That's because you don't understand, them. My points are not points that I invented. They are points brought up by many great philosophers in the debate over the nature of consciousness that has literally taken place over thousands of years.
If we want to make an artificial consciousness we obviously need to understand a bit about the physiological nature of consciousness.
We do understand a *bit* about consciousness. There have been several experiments done that dispel a lot of myths about how consciousness works.
Otherwise it's merely a "cargo cult" copy that is just pretending to be the real thing.
The case where we create a fake, and it is easily spotted as a fake is a trivial case where we can all agree it is not conscious.
If we can't recognize a "fake", then maybe it's not a fake. Or maybe it is a fake and we are all "fakes" too.
Definition themselves aren't testable. We get to define them. That's what makes it a definition. You can use science to see if things fit a definition.
Science doesn't dictate what we define as consciousness. It is only the tool we use to determine if something meets the criteria we decide on for consciousness.
For example: Which animals should be called cats is not a scientific question. Whether a particular animal meets the criteria for what we have previously agreed to call a cat is a scientific question.
The goal of science is to find the truth. The goal of philosophy is to figure out the right questions to ask. In the field of AI, it is the job of philosophy to define what a relevant and coherent definition of consciousness is, and it is the job of science to determine which things in the world meet that definition.
Scientists in the relevant fields - as should be immediately obvious.
The relevant field is philosophy.
The Turing test is not good enough for this situation - as should be immediately obvious. It's not just about fooling people
That's fine, because the Turing test is not just about fooling people.
I get that - please try to take this seriously instead of adding all this fake drama and fake misunderstanding.
It is not my fault you are incapable if understanding a thought experiment or appreciating why it's relevant.
You never actually addressed any of the points I raised.
Any reasonable person looking at the rate of progress in technology will say that it has been increasing at an exponential rate. Humans have existed for a few hundred thousand years (depending on how you define human).
We went through most of human history with only primitive hand tools. Then we had a few thousand years of civilization, with inventions like agriculture, catapults, aqueducts, etc.
The first aircraft was 100 years ago. Now we can travel in space. The first computer was 70 years ago, and now we have computers that are several orders of magnitude more powerful.
Maybe there is no more progress to be made in silicon chips. There was probably not much more progress to be made with catapults either. Technology as a whole is still exponential. Will it stay that way forever? I have no idea, but I don't think it's so crazy to think that it will keep growing exponentially for the foreseeable future.
We made the first quantum computer in 2008, maybe that's the way to get past barriers in classical computers.
Conversation over
I guess the conversation wasn't over... Now I really don't believe anything you say.
No. First we need to define consciousness. Then we get to decide if something fits the definition or not. I really do not understand why you are acting as if you are unable to grasp that point. Is this some sort of debating trick?
Who is the *we* that gets to decide the definition of conscious? It is going to be pretty hard if not impossible to come up with a consensus on something like this. Does this mean that we cannot even consider humans to be conscious because we don't have an agreed upon definition? No of course not. Whatever definition we come up with, it had better include humans, or it's meaningless.
We *don't* need to fully define consciousness to determine if *some* thing is conscious. (e.g. humans)
We *do* need to fully define consciousness to determine if *any* thing is conscious. (e.g. rocks, animals, current computers, etc)
Do humans get to be considered automatically conscious simply because they are humans (however that is defined)? No. There are properties of that most humans have that are the reasons we consider humans to be conscious. I am suggesting that meaningful human interaction is the single most important property for this. What do I mean by meaningful human interaction? I mean having a computer as a best friend or be in love with a computer.
Let me give a more exaggerated explanation of the Turing test:
Do you think it will *ever* be possible to have a computer as a best friend, or love a computer like a family member? Could you ever be as sad if a computer was destroyed as if your own child was killed?
If you say no, then you are essentially saying you think a computer will never pass the Turing test. This is fine with me, because my claim is only *if" a computer can pass the Turing test.
If you say yes, then what you are saying is that you could lose your best friend or family member feel just as sad, and still this "person" was not a real person because they were a computer not a biological human. This would be an example of something passing the Turing test but still not being conscious.
This is exaggerated to make a point. I think computers will be conscious well before they pass the Turing test. Even if computers pass the Turing test, they may not be able to be your best friend or family member. Most other humans do not get to be your best friend either. The Turing test is meant to be an over the top example of a machine that is *definitely* conscious by any reasonable definition. Whether such an artificial machine can/will ever exist we can debate.
If you can't say what you mean that's your problem. I'm not a mind reader.
Conversation over. You need to rethink all of this...
I just did, and shockingly I found myself agreeing with the father of computing over some random retard on the internet.
*Now* the conversation is over...
By Turing logic, if I can make you think a steaming pile of shit is a steak dinner, and you eat it, then even though you at shit to **you** it actually was a steak dinner.
A pile of shit is always a pile of shit, wether or not **you** think it's a steak dinner.
I don't think this is a good example, but I will try to work with it.
It's more like this. If you could take all the atoms in the pile of shit and change them into a configuration close enough to a steak that a person can not tell the difference between a "real steak" and a steak that used to be a pile of shit. His logic is that if nobody can tell the difference, then it doesn't matter that it used to be a pile of shit, it's a steak now.
**according to which human???** this is the opposite of science.
According to a bunch of humans. You can do the experiment with as many people as you want. Lots of science involves testing humans. They can figure out which parts of the brain do what by asking people to think of certain things while they are being scanned by an MRI. Which humans do they use? A whole bunch of them. I really don't see why you are fixated on this part. It is not the opposite of science.
It's about structure & function not being able to fool some dumbass.
what if it could fool you?
t's a stupid, facile, completely arbitrary goalpost...it's whatever you want to make up...it's **not verifyable** and therefore not scientific
It is not an arbitrary goalpost. It is actually a goal post that was intended to be so hard to satisfy that Turing thought nobody could dispute that something was conscious if it passed this test. In fact there are probably going to be things that are conscious that can not pass the turing test. The turing test is intended to serve as undeniable indicator of intelligence/consciousness (at least relative to humans). What he did not expect was that so many people would completely underestimate how hard this test is to pass.
It is absolutely verifiable. You just use statistics. Take a sample of 1000 people and have them be judges and contestants in the turing test and see if a machine is as likely to be voted human as a real human. I don't see whats so unscientific about this.
It's bullshit to define "machinic life" as anything that can cause a human to think it's "alive"
It's not about being alive. It's about being intelligent/conscious. Lots of things are alive, and they are not intelligent/conscious.
I am getting the impression that you really don't know a lot about Turing or the Turing Test. I would suggest you read about it some more before you make a judgement.
The current rate of progress is exponential. That doesn't mean that AI is right around the corner, but it does mean that when it happens, it may sneak up on us (i.e. we may not see it coming until it is upon us).
exactly the problem. the "turning test" is a facile demonstration...not a scientific "test" at all.
The question of how to measure consciousness is not *only* a scientific one. It is more a philosophical question. It has a scientific component to it which is why it is important that humans are prevented from seeing the subjects or hearing their "voice". It is a thought experiment detailing a scientific experiment to that could conclusively prove a machine was as intelligent as a human. Since human intelligence is best measured by human perception, the test uses human perception to make the evaluation in a scientific way.
We can have scientific tests about human perception. We can determine if people prefer coke or pepsi scientifically.
Do yourself a favor and ignore Turing completely when thinking about computing.
This is like saying we should ignore Einstein when thinking about physics. Besides, it is not about the man, but the insight that is gained by what Turing proposed. If you have gained no insight into computing from Turing, I would say you are either the most brilliant computer scientist that ever existed or that maybe you didn't understand his ideas.
I didn't say it would make it "intelligent"...it would do just as I said, give it legal rights. Just as giving Commander Data legal rights doesn't make it any more or less "human"...confering rights doesn't change the molecules of the thing.
How were bringing up legal rights relevant to the conversation on intelligence then?
Your analogy is ridiculous b/c it is irrational. If a being like Data was created, which mimics human thought on the most basic level (which, as TFA describes, we don't even have the theory to contexualize such a thing, let alone the ability to make it)...if we made it, there would be a ration question of what kind of rights it has.
My argument is not irrational. Yes it's true that rocks aren't intelligent, but that's why my argument has an "if" in it.
It's rational to ask if Data should have rights if he existed...it's not rational to ask if a rock should have rights. Your analogy fails.
Why is not rational? I am saying that what makes something worthy of human rights is whether it can pass some variation of the turing test. I am not saying that rocks can pass the test. I am saying that *if* by some bizarre circumstance a rock existed that could pass the turing test, then we would have no choice but to accept that it is intelligent and as worthy of rights as any other human.
The reason to give data rights when he asks for them is that this is an example of passing the turing test. We would not give rights to a computer program that simply prints "please give me rights" every 2 seconds. The fact that it is more convincing (to human perception) when data asks for rights is what makes the difference.
This is in contrast to alternatives like "human rights should only be given to carbon based life forms with human genomes, because these are the only things known to have of consciousness".
Both the "turing test" and "intelligence" are matters of ****HUMAN PERCEPTION****
So what?
Whatever thought is, I'm sure it's not going to be dependent on some property of carbon atoms that silicon atoms don't have.
If we can't do that how do we know if it's really thinking or just something complex enough that it looks like it
What you are referring to is the idea of a philosophical zombie (or p-zombie). It is true that we would not be able to tell if a computer was conscious or just a p-zombie. I think descartes "I think therefore I am" is a pretty convincing argument to convince yourself that you are conscious. But it doesn't work on other humans. They might just be p-zombies too. How do you decide that other humans are really conscious? Whatever it is, I would say that once a computer can pass this test, it is only fair to assume it is conscious as well.
Brains in general, human brains included, do not process information. They generate consciousness.
Brains *do* process information. They *also* generate consciousness. I would argue that they generate consciousness *by* processing information.
They do this in ways that neuroscientists still don't understand. As a neuroscientist I can say this without hesitation.
We don't understand how consciousness is generated. That doesn't mean we can't make it happen. The Wright brothers made a working airplane before everything was figured about about aerodynamics. Many aeodynamic principles were at play in the Wright Flyer that the Wright brothers didn't understand, but they knew enough to make it happen.
Maybe humans don't know how consciousness works. But we know how evolution works. And evolution generated consciousness. We may not be able to make consciousness directly, but we may be able to make something that can make consciousness in a way we don't understand.
Silicon chips are not alive, and will never generate consciousness as we now understand it.
In order to make something conscious, the parts need to be "alive"?! Well we know that's not true. Humans are conscious. They are made of cells. The cells are made of proteins that are not alive. Humans are ultimately made of quarks and leptons. None of which are alive or conscious. Clearly living things and consciousness can be made from parts that are not themselves living or conscious.
A government can grant civil rights to a rock. That doesn't make it intelligent. If you can have a conversation with a rock then it is intelligent no matter what the government says. It seemed like data was capable of a conversation. Maybe he was on the cusp of being able to pass the turing test.
So humans don't measure things, and that's what makes them smart?
Nice :)
The material (silicon) doesn't matter. Only the architecture matters. The difference between a human brain and a typical laptop is not the material it's made of. It is that the laptop is designed from the top down, with most of the computation happening in a central location (or a few locations). A human brain is a massively parallel computer with computation happening in every neuron.
If we just add more silicon chips we can have more parallel computing. They don't even need to be near eachother. Computers already transfer information about 6 orders of magnitude faster than neurons. We could have computers 200 miles apart that send each other information faster than 2 neurons on opposite sides of the same brain. And we can fit a lot of silicon chips in a 200 mile radius.
If the mechanical turk gets good enough (e.g. passing the turing test), then why wouldn't it be thinking for itself?
machines cannot do anything without direct, explicit directions - told to it by a human.
Everything a computer does is a result of it's programming and input. The same could be said of a human. The only difference is that the programming in a human is a result of natural selection, and the programming in a computer is a result of intelligent design (by a human which was indirectly a result of natural selection).
In the same way that a computer can not do anything that it's programming does not allow, a human can not do anything that his/her brain does not allow. It's true that human brains allow a lot of things that current computer programs don't, but you could in principle make a computer program do anything that a neuron could do. It's all just matter and energy.
That's the definition of stupid to me: unable to do a thing without having to all spelled out to you.
computers have low level instructions and high level instructions. The existence of low level instructions does not mean that there are *only* low level instructions. Just because the human brain has neurons that work by electric potentials doesn't mean that we can be considered to *only* do what is spelled out by the electron potentials in our neurons. Or maybe it does mean that, but it should be the same for both humans and computers. There is a higher level model that governs the behavior of humans. By the same token there is a higher level model that governs computers as well. "Find me the shortest directions from L.A. to New York" is a higher level instruction than "add 2 numbers". It may not be currently as advanced as humans, but it is growing exponentially.
A computer not only has software (i.e. the instructions), but also hardware to actually execute the instructions in a reliable way. For the 1950's library to be considered "a computer" you would have to include the librarian (or regular person) who actually follows the instructions of the lookup system to retrieve the information, and even then whether this is a "reliable" method of execution is debatable.
In fact you could in theory make any computer that is only instructions written on paper (e.g. copy data from this memory address to that memory address, add this memory address to that memory address and store it in a third memory address, etc) and have a human being carry out those instructions. If we knew enough about neurobiology we could probably simulate the human brain on a computer that was simulated by a human being following instructions, but it might take the human being an entire lifetime to advance the simulation by 1 nanosecond or something.
Having the computations be executed by a computer just speeds things up by several orders of magnitude. And having the instruction in electronic form instead of on paper allows the computer to more easily read the instructions. Computers also make fewer mistakes. The software can be much simpler if it is not required to withstand damage (i.e. bit flips).
1. It's still cherry picking data if someone points out that the one piece of data you picked is an anomaly and is not representative of the data as a whole, and you just disregard it. That's one of the reasons you are supposed to use lots of samples to prevent stuff like this from happening. Cherry picking usually involves carefully selecting your data so all your samples falsely indicate some predetermined conclusion. If you only pick one sample to base your conclusion on, not only is it cherry picking, but bad cherry picking.
2. If we look at data from June 2008 to may 2009 the USD stayed the same and the australian dollar lost 33% of it's value. Why is 2009 - 2011 a better time to pull a single sample to base a conclusion on than 2008 to 2009? I didn't cherry pick this data. I picked it *then* looked. I did however look at a bunch of other bits of data first that didn't really fit what I was saying. But when I picked this range, and *then* looked, it did a really good job of proving my point so I kept it.
3. 2009 - 2011 is not "the economic crisis". It actually began in late 2007.
Before throwing around phrases like "intellectually dishonest" consider what you are doing.
You probably actually have to know what you are doing to be intellectually dishonest. So maybe intellectually dishonest was a bit too harsh.
One person picks a time frame of economic crisis because that is when volatility is the most severe, then looks at data. Another person rejects that timeframe because the data is contrary to their position. You sure you want to discuss intellectual honesty?
It's more like one person chooses the one of the only possible sample to base a conclusion on that proves his point. The other person points out that this is an anomaly and suggests that the whole data set should be used. The first person comes up with some irrational reason why this one sample is better than the others.
You sure you want to discuss intellectual honesty?
You're a fucking idiot. I'm done with this discussion.
1. The scale doesn't matter. If for example the australian dollar was worth 10 USD, you'd expect the absolute volatility of the USD to be 10x as much. If it was 10x as much in absolute terms then that means it is the same relative volatility. This is why a $1 stock going up a dollar is a big deal and Google stock going up a dollar is not.
2. This graph does not show even show the USD being 6x as volatile as the australian dollar in absolute terms. They way they have scaled it actually highlights that their relative volatility is almost the same. Even the absolute volatility is minimal. It looks like only a factor of about 20%
You are absolutely cherry picking data. You are selecting a peak and comparing it to a valley at a later date to show a lack of change. This is intellectually dishonest and would be rejected by any sort of peer review process if was interpreted this way in a journal. These are not the sorts of things you are allowed to do in statistics.
Volatility means erratic change. Both the graph for the gold price in USD and australian dollars show approximately the same level of volatility.
If you replaced the graph for the USD with a straight line that went from the bottom left to the upper right of the graph, it would make the dollar a very poor investment related to gold, but there wouldn't be any volatility. It would indicate that the price of the dollar was gradually and predictably rising (e.g. due to gradual and predictable inflation).
The jaggedness of the line is the volatility. Both the USD and australian dollar are jagged, but not only that their jaggedness actually aligns quite well. If you subtracted one curve from the other, you'd find a more smooth line as a result. The fact that 2 different currencies show the same pattern indicates that the bulk of the volatility is in gold.
volatility is more than just how much something changes. It also includes how much the rate of change changes.
Volatility isn't always bad. I'd rather have something that was increasing in value in a volatile way than having something else that was decreasing in value in a very predictable way.
The downside to volatility is that it creates uncertainty, and uncertainty carries risk. If you can have confidence in what is going to happen, then you can make better decisions. Investing in gold carries a lot of short/medium term risk, but tends to be a good long term investment.
When we have an economic crisis and everyone flocks to gold, driving the price up sharply in a short amount of time, this is not a sign of stability for gold. This is a source of volatility. It is good for people who already had gold, but that's different than stability.
From what you've written, it almost sounds as if you are a pantheist rather than a theist.
In addition to being a theist are you also a proponent of a particular religion (e.g. Christianity)?
I see a lot of flaws in your deductions. But the main one seems to be that your argument for God is just a prime mover argument, which I find utterly unconvincing. Truth and raw materials couldn't come from nothing so the only other possibility is God? Where did God come from? Why isn't God subject to this same line of reasoning? If you believe that God was eternal, then by the same logic, the universe could be eternal. Surely an uncreated universe is easier to swallow than an uncreated God, especially if you believe that it takes a really intelligent thing (God) to create a not as smart thing (the universe and people).
Another mistakes I feel you are making, is the assumption that something can't come from nothing. While this may seem like common sense, we already know that common sense is not the way the universe works. Common sense is what humans evolved to survive, but common sense doesn't apply to relativity or quantum mechanics. Common sense is not a proper substitute for consistency, and the way the universe works consistently contradicts our intuition.
If you think the whole universe *is* God, why does that make God dead? A bunch of cells *is* me, and I'm not dead.
The idea that God killed himself to create all of us so that we could all be Gods, seems very narcissistic. It is easy to fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing things. Even there were a creator of the universe, to assume that he would have the same value system of wanting to procreate and to have a willingness to die to procreate is pretty far fetched. We are a product of evolution. We have been naturally selected to procreate. Procreation is worth dying to *us* because we are the genetic children of expert procreators. Surely you don't think the God you are imagining is not a product of this same evolutionary process.
I understand the desire to believe that we are here for a purpose or some grand mission. What could be more grand than a mission from our cosmic father God? I also see the pointlessness of a mission with a predetermined outcome. However this is all just wishful thinking. I don't see any reason that suggests that it *must* be this way or is even remotely likely to be this way. I would love it if we all went to heaven. Wouldn't it be great if we didn't have to die or ever be separated from those we love? This has no bearing on whether any of it is true.
And that's why I am worried for the field of science if indeed you are a scientist. It is not an ad hominem attack. An ad hominem attack would be "Your ideas are stupid because you are a priest". I am not attacking your ideas because of who you are (this is what an ad hominem attack is). In fact I am attacking your ideas. It is your ideas that make me question who you are.
I sort of have an expectation of scientists to be expert logicians who are only swayed by hard evidence rather than things like wishful thinking.
I certainly don't mind you tossing around ideas. In fact I give you credit for your creativity. I think what you have come up with is better than just about any religious creation story I've heard of. I think you're version is better than anything Moses, Jesus, Mohammad, Joseph Smith, or L Ron Hubbard came up with. I do, however feel that your way if thinking is not the sort of mindset I would expect or want a scientist to have.
If I were sorting something alphabetically, I would do radix sort to sort everything by letter, then I do insertion sort on each pile.
I studied computer science too, but I think the overhead of doing a sort with better time complexity actually is a significant hindrance for me to actually use it in practice. I'm never going to sort more than like a hundred things (because I'm lazy), and a computer is never going to take longer than a second to sort a million things. So it makes sense for me to use the sort with lowest overhead and for a computer to use a sort with the best time complexity.
That said, I might do a merge sort the next time I have to sort something just to make it more entertaining.
By asking you whether you believe in quantum mechanics, I would cause your superposition to collapse into one of the two states, because I am effectively performing a measurement.