Never said I was representative of anything. Almost crying over not being able to figure out a hot corner, as opposed to a button in the same location, is a bit hard for me to really sympathize with.
If I sold you a carton of Rocky Road ice cream, and you got home, took a big bite, and discovered it tasted like liverwurst: wouldn't you be pissed too?
Oddly I'm not sure... I think I'd be too confused to actually be pissed.
No, it is WORSE by a lot of analysts standards. Including several well-known pundits of Human-Computer Interaction and UI design.
First; If your so passionate about it, don't use it. Who cares? I don't mind it, so I'll use it.
Also, it follows Fitt's Law rather nicely. Barring multiple monitors the corners are the easiest targets, followed by edges. I never said it was perfect, there has never been a perfect OS from a usability and efficiency standpoint, and there never will be one. OS X came close, but even Apple mucked up their own rules for more visual flash over function.
Further; when I hear the word "pundit" I replace it with "blah blah blah". A pundit is just a loud person with an opinion, they don't have a privileged point of view. Pundits opinions don't matter much more than anyone else's, and thus really aren't worth listening to.
Win 8 could be much better. I don't like the fact that its two OSs tacked together, rather crudely. But I also don't think its the end of the world, or unusable. I, for example, really like the new Start screen, I like tiles. They display information in a clearer fashion than just "little icon - title", I also like being able to group tiles in ways that fit how I work. I don't mind it being a different screen, since it doesn't really disrupt my work flow (having the desktop disappear for 1 second isn't a hindrance to people with normal memories and attention spans). I also think it looks nice, which is a nice plus.
It doesn't take up the whole screen with alerts. A little bar pops up on the top right corner, and slowly fades away. Just like every other alert system. It only takes up your whole screen if you tell it too.
The Charms bar is an annoyance, and doesn't fit in. I agree. The difference between the top left program list, and alt-tab annoys me. The lack of "close" buttons on Metro apps annoys me. The lack of Metro tiling options annoys me to. Having options scattered all about the UI like they put the control panel and shot it from a shotgun is also plenty annoying. Also the bottom right corner is bizarre in desktop mode. Almost to the corner hides windows just like in 7, but 2 pixels to the right and it opens the charms bar... Also, why the hell does the charms bar have a windows button, of there is the same thing on the far left, which require less work to get to?
On the other hand, a single day spent using it normally was sufficient to use it as efficiently as Windows 7. And now I don't even notice, I hardly ever go to the Start screen, because my taskbar is set up just like in Win 7. I rarely have to dig into options, because its set up. I pretty much ignore Metro apps, outside a snazzy Pandora app, the weather app, the People app, and Netflix. Meanwhile, the OS is more responsive, files copy faster and gives me more input, my USB wifi now wakes from sleep like it should (which was worth the money in itself...), and the task manager is brilliant.
Finally, it is you who is the minority of people. A majority of users found fault with the OS for various reasons...
Bully for them. Are these the same people that thought that the Ribbon in Office was going to break into their house and murder their pets? Or are these the people who hated Vista with great passion, even though after the first couple of months it was as stable as XP (or at least I've had the same amount of BSODs in Vista as Win 7, in roughly the same amount of time). People have different reasons for liking things, or disliking them. I only care about what works for ME. Everyone else could go jump in a lake for all I care. Hell, I use, and like Linux as well, which on the desktop, use wise, is the most irrelevant OS in the world, by popular opinion. Same for OS X, until recently. Obviously these are inferior, because they aren't as popular.
Also psychology plays a role. A majority of people HATE change. This is a weakness in them, it doesn't really reflect on
You figure it out once, and it isn't a problem anymore. It isn't that difficult. Really, if you need to complain about Win 8, there are hundreds of more valid complaints. Seriously, I figured it out in TWO SECONDS.
Buy your reasoning, we never should have gotten GUIs, even. Since for the 20 years previous to Mac OS or Windows we were all happy with arcane text commands. We shouldn't have gotten a Start button to begin with, since it didn't exist previous with 95.
Yeah right, surely you sat down in front of an PC XT and started randomly banging the keyboard until you somehow accidentally typed DIR B:, and then figured it out from there.
Kind of. My first computer, the C64, came in a box with no instructions. It it have a shoe-box full of floppies though, some with hand printed labels. So we spent a lot of time going through all the floppies and trying to piece together how to actually run things, how to get directories, etc... Just from scrapping it all together from cryptic labels.
Later, though, yes, we found some books. But there still has a fair amount of just trying stuff until something interesting happened.
Which is exactly the complaint about Win8. Other than a 5 second animation when you first install, there's no tutorial mode or on-screen hints instructing the user what to do. Manual? forget about it.
This is a problem. And it does feel pretty arrogant on MS's part. Though, really, it isn't that hard to just Google it. I looked at several Youtube videos before thinking about purchasing it. The difference between then, and now, is the availability and ease of access on information. We had to suss it out ourselves, and only later did I have to actually find a place (brick and mortar) that sold books on how to use it at a higher level. Now you just look it up, and all that information is yours in a fraction of a second.
It still is a problem, though, don't get me wrong.
And while you were sitting at home reading computer manuals, the other kids were out socializing and getting good at sports. It's hilarious how nerds judge everyone by their own introverted lifestyle.
Wow... I'm glad you were hiding in my house when I was a child. We also rode bikes, skateboarded, and socialized. We had a decent sized neighborhood DnD group, since the guy across the street used to write for TSR, and another guy used to work with Steve Jackson. I had several blue ribbons from track and field events, and was generally picked first for soccer. I was also pretty active in the scouts.
Also, I'd say, in the grand scheme of things, learning how to dissect computers is more important than kicking a ball around, in the long run. Wow, you sure were good at kicking a ball when you were ten... so how is that applicable to anything useful, or meaningful, in life?
Further, if you hate nerds, why are you even visiting this site? You realize, even visiting here means your probably a nerd.
Try supporting an office full of average, run of the mill, people sometime and your perspective might change. "People" are not you or me. Even if they are experts in some other area, the majority of them will need training for any major computer related change. Most of them are afraid to change even the most simple settings because they think they might break something or might get in to trouble. And in some environments many settings are often locked down anyway.
This is a good point. I wasn't thinking about it from a support, or organizational point of view... In a less formal home environment I think my premise stands, though. Banging your keyboard until something neat (or terrible) happens is great for the living room, but pretty bad in the office.
And just because you don't mind doing something a harder way (or even if it happens to work better for you) doesn't mean that it is OK to force that way on to everyone else.
In a corporate environment, force is the name of the game. I don't want to use Windows 7, I like XP. I don't want to use XP, I like 98se, I don't want 98, I want 95, I don't want 95, I want 3.11, I don't want 3.11 I want DOS... etc... all the way down to changing vacuum tubes, and punch cards. I'm not saying that Win 8 is superior, or even very good (thats mostly opinion and thus irrelevant), but things always change, and people are always uncomfortable... Does this mean we should never change?
That said, I do feel for all the poor corporate nerds out there who will have to explain Win 8 to novice users. I dread the day my own dad needs to use it, since it breaks conventions ENOUGH to confuse him. But then again, he still doesn't know what a tab is, or that he can have more than one window open (which is odd, considering the name of the OS).
What a wonderful future that will be where instead of one device capable of doing lots of things we have lots of individual devices dedicated to a single purpose.
Which is actually what I do.
My DLSR is thousands of time better than my phone's camera. When I don't want to carry my huge, fragile, and expensive camera with me, I was a little Olympus mirrorless, that still takes better pictures than my phone, and pretty much (with a small, pancake prime) fits in my pocket.
My iPod is better than my phone's music player. It has more battery life, and when the battery dies I'm not left in the cold. It can hold more music, and I actually own said music (as opposed to rent). Cloud players are great, but my iPod doesn't eat into my limited data cap that Verizon forced on me this year.
My Nook is many times more convenient than trying to read a full novel on my itty-bitty, backlit, phone screen. Same thing as the ipod, too, if my Nook's battery dies I'm out of reading material, if my phone's dies, I'm screwed. Further, I've also been known to carry Real Paper(tm) books, or Dead Pulp(tm) magazines.
I'm almost at the point where I want to carry a 7" tablet, and a dumb phone (like a Nokia brick), instead of a "smart"phone. Smartphones kind of suck at everything. And by trying to do everything they compromise the most important aspect, being a PHONE. Right now, my phone can barely carry a charge throughout the day, with normal use, if I use GPS on it, I'll probably have to keep it plugged in the cigarette lighter outlet. The voice quality is suspect (and has been on everyone smartphone I've used or owned). Using the internet on them, or typing anything more than "c u 2nite"-type-drivel is annoying.
If even one of the programs I use are a "metro" program, I am not able to use regular windows programs at the same time.
This annoys me as well. But on the bright side, there isn't a single "Metro" program... er... "app"... that I actually want to, or need to, use. And I doubt that there will be any for a long time... They lack the ability to really ever fill the role of a serious "desktop mode" program.
It does hit the main flaw of Windows 8 on the head though; the jarring disconnect between "Metro" and traditional Windows. It does feel like to operating systems tacked together, and not a unified whole. No matter how good the two base systems are, they suffer from the way they are joined. Windows 8 has schizophrenia.
I still don't mind it, but every once in awhile this disjoint hits me in the face.
Jimmy Carter blamed the 'crisis of American spirit' on the American people themselves.
And he was probably right... I find it amusing that we're (Americans) not allowed to find fault with ourselves or our culture. And God forbid that someone ever points out that we might suffer some very deep, very pervasive, systemic problems, both in culture, and society.
I love the "Great American Tautology"; we're the best country on Earth, because we're America, and America is the best.
What makes me sad, is that as a child, younger than 10, me and the neighbor kid sat around over a summer and learned, with no previous experience, how to use, play games on, and finally program for the Commodore 64. I also had to figure out how to use DOS, with no experience. I also had to figure out Windows 3.11, again with no help, or experience. My parents didn't help, since computers were magical devices, that ran on unicorn farts, to them.
And now its a sad, sad, thing that children can't figure out how to use a hot corner, without parental involvement and concern. And worse, they almost cry because of it.
This has nothing to do with Windows 8 being good or bad... But what happened to letting kids learn things, on their own, the hard way? If a replacing a button with a hot corner is considered too daunting for our children, then I'm somewhat frightened of what the future may hold for us.
And people DO NOT just magically adapt to doing something new, especially when the new way is worse.
People, by your use, must be absolute morons. It took me less than 10 minutes to be able to use Win 8 as proficiently as I was using Win 7. Hot corners aren't new, or magical. And really, the Start hot corner is in the SAME EXACT place as the Start Button is! If you can't figure it out after doing it once, the problem rests with the user, not MS.
I don't mind it, personally. You do. It is a completely subjective judgement, it isn't "worse". It is worse for YOU. Its merely different, which doesn't make something worse or better. There are some bits of Win 8 that I would say are objectively worse (alt-tab being programs+apps, but top-right hot-corner being only apps. Different interface on apps and programs... i.e. the overall lack of consistency in UI interactions), but changing the behavior of the start menu isn't one of them.
The bottom left corner of the screen... It isn't THAT difficult. Its in the same place as the Win 95-7 start button. You get it once, and after that how is it a big deal?
The lack of DVD playback, out of the box, would be a terrible PitA for normal users though. What the hell were they thinking for that? Is it to force people to upgrade to the Media Whatnot edition? Or were they too cheap to pay the meager licensing? Probably something like this; "tablets don't need it, so desktops don't need it".
I do wish I could have been a fly on the wall when they were planning this.
... He is doing a great job running Microsoft into the ground
Why would you want less competition in the OS market? So we're forced to live under Apple? So we're forced to get Linux desktops, and live with all its issues. I hope MS sticks around, personally. I like having the ability to choose what OS I want to use (and more often than not, I have all three running at the same time, in the same house).
That said, while I don't think that Windows 8 is as bad as the internet wants me to thing, the touch thing has led to some problems. The whole damn OS feels schizophrenic. On the desktop it is merely "okay", to Win 7's "very good". This evalution only holds true in the interface, design domain, technically Win 8 is a bit better.
I was really hoping that MS would unveil some sort of Kinect style device for the PC, especially for using Win 8. Not to replace traditional input methods, but to supplement it. I wouldn't mind being able to sit back, with my feet up. and scroll pages by waving my fingers. Having to reach closer to the monitor, leaning in, to do the same thing is just a stupid idea. I'm not really sure what MS was thinking.
That said, their x86 tablet is a brilliant idea. I'd love a tablet that allowed me to run almost any desktop program with the convenience of modern Android/iOS devices; as opposed to the gimped mobile apps. I'd love the ability to stick an SD card in my tablet in the field, and use Photoshop or Lightroom. Or have access to a real word processor with a Bluetooth keyboard, rather than the simplistic versions I have to use now.
That said, I'm not going to lay down $1000 for this convenience. Get it close to the price of an iPad, and I'd pick it any day. Hell, I even like the GUI-formerly-know-as-Metro more than iOS or stock Jelly Bean, its prettier.
Reading books doesn't inform you what people currently think a "social contract" is.
Maybe not, but just because some people think it means something different than originally intended, it doesn't not devalue the original idea. Hobbs, Locke, and Rousseau, and company, don't disappear because someone has a different spin on the turn. Actually, if you look at that list, you'll notice they had different spins on the same concept as well.
In your own words:
Those weren't my words. Nor are they my ideas. I actually think the poster misused the term "social contract" in this case. He instead meant a social or legal obligation, which is a different thing.
Nope. Future promised benefits for current payment is fundamentally insecure because the promised benefits aren't sure to happen. And the "mismanaged" aspect is just a manifestation of this.
Nothing is sure to happen, does this mean we shouldn't bother with anything? If they weren't mismanaged, and no one was allowed to touch those funds, then how would they be insecure?
Hey, I'm not the largest fan of how SS works. But it is better than nothing. A safety net might be a big bad "entitlement", but in the view of the lives of actual people, it is a necessary thing. I'm also a fan of not having to work until the day I die, and having a small modicum of security right now. I''ve got money in various long term saving schemes, but I trust the market less than I trust the government. Recent history gives good reason for this (as stated, my parent's 401k lost half of its value in a little over a week).
Please don't read more into that statement than was intended. I think the market is fine for 99% of things, and I distrust the government on 75% of things.
Too bad. What "social contract" implies to me is a bunch of bleating sheep trying to get more out than they put in
Wow... I'm actually almost speechless. Obviously not completely, since I'm writing this... but... Wow.
Have you actually ever read a book on politics, or the evolution of government, or even about what our Founding Fathers were thinking, and basing their creation around? You realize that the idea of a "social contract" is pretty much vital to the reasoning that lead to the founding of the US, and all the Libertarian and Constitutional ideas that people like to bandy around?
Seriously, if some very smart people never developed the theory of the social contract, you'd still be living in a kingdom, as a serf.
I similarly flush money on various mandatory social welfare schemes (in the US, Social Security, unemployment insurance, Medicare/Medicaid, etc), but I don't have an expectation that these will be around when I need them.
Why not? My parents are currently reaping the Social Security that they sowed for 50 years. They also are receiving all that Medicare that they paid into... Its amazing! Perhaps your view is the problem, I expect to get the benefits of what I pay into, so I'm invested in the health and longevity of these programs. I don't see why I should expect less out of life than my parents.
You are ENTITLED to Social Security, because you pay into Social Security. I'm also entitled to my bank giving back the money in my checking account, because I payed INTO my checking account. Same thing. I'm also going to be ENTITLED to Medicare, since I've paid into it my whole life. I'm ENTITLED to police and fire service, since I've paid into them my whole life, via taxes. I'm entitled to every other government service (military protection, economic protections, a body of law, enforcement of said laws, fair elections, and generally keeping me safe from big guys who I have no individual way of protecting myself from) because I PAY for them. I am entitled. As are you. As is every other tax payer in the country. Just like I'm entitled to my paycheck, because I give my labor to an employer, via a contract.
, I'd rather save money and try to make a stand myself. Self-reliance isn't perfect, but it's a lot easier to listen to than whiny dependent entitlement.
And then something happens, and you're screwed by random chance. My father's 401k lost over half its value a year before he was supposed to retire. Luckily he as Social Security and a Union pension. Otherwise he'd be living with me and my girlfriend, or on the streets living off handouts. Self-reliance is fine, until you realize that there are tons of circumstances completely out of your control, and thus the consequences aren't yours to control. This might not be a problem for some, but it is to me, since I am not a sociopath.
And who's going to take care of the next generation? Pension schemes, private and public, world-wide are failing because they too often can't pay out what they promise. It's a near universal problem. Taking care of people is nice, but not when it's at the expense of other people who won't get that care. Creating unsustainable systems doesn't help in the long run.
By nature pension schemes and social security are secure. You get out, what you pay in. They fail because they are mismanaged. Our government, and many unions, used them as slush funds, and now they are hurting. Its like the head of your company using the profits derived from your labor to buy a nice new yacht, and then deducting it from your wages.
Unalienable rights are not entitlements. They exist without effort, without cause without demanding from anyone or anything else.
Where do these "unalienable rights" come from, and if they are without effort please explain all the effort that was required to secure them, and force others to recognize them? None of these "unalienable" "effortless" rights came without a fight, and often they were carved from what others viewed as their rights (kings, the aristocracy, white men, etc...). Rights come from something, they aren't a priori, they didn't spring up ex nihilo, they have to have a source to mean anything. You can't claim they are natural, since they didn't exist for 90% of human history (and didn't exist, obviously, before humans), and many of them don't exist for much of the world now. Rights are just a social contract, they exist wholly within the society that recognizes them, and they only matter because we recognize them. They aren't magic. There has been huge fights, even in recent history, over CLAIMING rights.
Taking a long view, an "entitlement" is just a "right" that hasn't been accepted yet. What would be the difference between being "entitled" to healthcare, or education, and having a recognized "right" to them?
There is a sense of shame when one doesn't meet their obligations, where here in the west, especially in the US, the whole goal of political body seems to be to get (increase) what you are "entitled" to, while incurring no "obligations" at all. Someone else will bail you out.
If the obligations don't benefit the society as a whole, and the people who constituted that society, then those obligations are suspect. If your obligations are legally dictated, and exist only to benefit government or industry, then those obligations aren't valid. This ignores the fact that the west is swimming in obligations, and these obligations are not magically lesser than societies with obligations you are fond of, of were brought up in.
As I stated before, rights exist, apart from and not depending upon anyone or anything else.
And where did they come from? In the billions of years before humans existed, were just just floating around in the air waiting for us to claim them. Are there still rights floating in the ether they we haven't yet discovered? Rights are a social construct.
I'm still miffed that del Toro didn't get to do the Hobbit. The creature design alone would be awesome.
Not as sad as I am that they forced him to scrap At The Mountains of Madness... If ever a man existed that could actually make the first good Lovecraft movie, del Toro is that man.
My friend always wanted to see Joss Whedon, Kevin Smith, and JJ Abrams collectively direct a Star Wars movie. Joss Whedon can do sci-fi and characters, but would end up making Leia where latex and kill people with her mind, Kevin Smith would be highly respectful of the source material, but would end having everyone sitting around the Death Star food-court talking about nothing, and JJ Abrams can do effects, and battles, but would end up trying to make a very thinly veiled allegory for God, which he would have Darth Vader state at the end ("Luke, I am your Heavenly Father")
I personally want Lars Von Trier, Michael Haneke, or Warner Herzog to direct it... It would be as respectful as the prequels (not at all), but at least it would be intentionally miserable and depressing. And to see Jar Jar slowly go insane, and finally passionless slaughter Obi-wan while drinking apple juice, would be priceless.
The first season was good. The second season was crap. I don't think it was fully Joss Whedon's fault, I think he just rushed to conclude the story in the face of impending cancellation. Though, upon forcing myself to watch almost all of Buffy, this was probably for the best. It started as strong as Firefly or Dollhouse, and then tumbled into a boring, directionless, 90201-with-vampires-and-lesbians, crapper. Which is the exact problem Abrams' has. Lost started strong, but there was a point where it should have ended, and didn't. Fringe was the same... It was an awesome show, but it should have ended at the end of the 3rd or 4th season, but instead it lurched on, directionlessly, like a zombie cash-cow.
Joss Whedon is much more solid though. And this is probably the absolute height of his ability. Cabin in the Woods was absolutely brilliant. Avengers was the first superhero movie that I felt was written by someone who actually LIKED the source material.
JJ Abrams has Cloverfield, and thats it. And I'm still not sure if I like it for reasons that were intentional (it is to 9-11 what Godzilla was to Hiroshima and Nagasaki). The Star Trek reboot was... okay. The plot sucked, and it pretty much covered every trope I hate in modern "big" movies (which is why I don't watch any blockbusters now, unless 10 people I know fully recommend them, minus everyone I know who hated them). The characters were pretty awful. The casting was absolutely brilliant though.
In a modern computer every effort is made to isolate the circuits from "cross talk", the natural system uses this feature to produce intelligence. None of our computer circuits get fatigued yet that is part of Intelligence computations.
This is a problem with making a "human style intelligence", but not an intelligence in general. My theory is that AI is possible (again, very very hard, but possible), but any real attempt will create an alien intelligence, something not recognizable as human. If a computer was intelligent in this way, how would we measure it, how could we ever be sure? How could we relate to it?
Creating a "human style intelligence" is very tricky for the reasons you put forth. But we do have to wonder if you need a human brain to form a consciousness, or if the physical medium is incidental. Is a 1:1 scale brain really a prerequisite to human-like intellect?
2. Kurzweil is on the dubious side of strong AI. Waaay over.
You will never catch me arguing in favor of Kurzweil's sanity. Ever. He wants a God AI, so he can be immortal, and this flavors pretty much everything he does.
Also, it is not obvious at all that everything that might be available to experience is reducible to a physical description. You seem to assume that.
I do assume this, since the alternative is meaningless, or at least not something we can do anything with intellectually. Perhaps someday we'll have a tool for dealing with intangibles, but right now all we have is science, math, and logic. I'm not arguing in favor of AI, or saying that Kurzweil will have one up and running in a week or ten days. I'm just stating that Strong AI isn't physically impossible, in that it isn't barred by the various laws of the universe. It may or may not come to pass in the distant future. If we can be said to be intelligent, and we are a mere collection of inanimate particles, then it should be possible for any sufficiently complex collection of inanimate particles to also be intelligent. This doesn't mean it is a simple problem, or we're going to be able to tackle it, it is just a logical statement of potentiality.
. When you see a magician at the circus you are not having a serious discussion "how do you know..." now, are you?!
I went to school for philosophy and psychology, I'm pretty much always saying that. Though, if a magic trick was sufficiently magic like, i.e. not explainable by our current understanding of the universe, it would be magic. Even if a trick.
Can you define "complex" as spatial arrangement or anything physical? It is a strictly qualitative term that requires intelligent evaluation. That is the problem... some "complexities" may be irreducible to others.
Now this is an interesting thought. I'd say complexity does't have to be spatial, or strictly physical (think software, or ideas). Farther than this, I'm going to have to give it some thought. I do know that there are objective ways of measuring it some branches of science and math, but as to how much that has with the potential of emergent behavior, I have no clue. Irreducible complexities is also an interesting idea. I'm not sure about them, or their existence. But this is one of my problems with AI, building a mind from the top down (sure, we say bottom up, but there is a goal at the top which informs the bottom), is strange. As is the fact that a machine intelligence would have any relation to our messy, accidental, biologic flavor. Get rid of the reductionism, and irreducible complexity would no longer be an issue.
You may not realize how indebted modern science and AI is to Descartes... it is Cartesian through and through and not going anywhere right now.
In method it is Cartesian, in substance not so much. Substance isn't wax. Further, it is Cartesian more so in his works on science and math than his actual metaphysics.
. Artificial life would mean humans making something alive out of something else that is not.
Odd, humans are living things made out of things that aren't. Artificial life is vastly simpler than AI though, since life has to meet a limited number of simple criteria to be alive. Intelligence is more problematic, since we really don't even know what it means, it requires a huge amount of complexity, and we have no idea how, or why we're intelligent.
"Intelligence" is my second most despised term (after "rights"), we don't have a universal definition for it, much less a definition that can be generalized outside of humans to other species, or even machines. This leads to a problem, are we talking about machines that can be generally intelligent (learning, problems solving, and coping with novelty), or machines that act like humans? The former is very possible, the latter is much more dubious. Also, what human aspects are necessary for something to be called intelligent? Creativity? Emotion? Irrationality? Social behaviors? Language?
That said, AI exists, in limited forms right now. Strong AI is the pie in the sky, and for some reason we keep confusing them. AI is very real. Human-like thinking machines are something else entirely.
Humans intellect also disappears like circus magic. We are very capable of losing out "higher facilities" and turning into reflex, instict, and irrationality, or falling back on mostly obsolete evolved behavior.
An artifice would mean making something seem alive when it is not.
"seem"... this word is useless. If something acts intelligent, then "seeming" intelligent becomes meaningless. How can you prove it isn't? If inputs give the expected output, it is intelligent for all useful purposes. Unless there is some sort of magical "stuff" that makes us intelligent, of course. Look up p-zombies, or the various refutations of Searle's Chinese room thought experiment.
We are nothing but a bunch of atoms (not living, not intelligent), arranged into simple structures (amino acids) (not living, not intelligent), arranged into slightly more complex structures (proteins) (not living, not intelligent), arranged into slightly more complex structures (cells) (mostly not living, not intelligent), arranged into slightly more complicated structures (mostly not living, not intelligent), arranged into a big slightly more complex whole (living, intelligent). Why would we be special? Why couldn't a machine be intelligent? It would be a bunch of atoms arranged into increasingly more complex (but dead and dumb) structures just like us. Do we have special sauce that makes it possible for our dead and dumb structure, but no others?
We verge on Cartesian dualism here.
To be clear, I don't think strong AI is possible, at least not for a long long time. But I don't think that yours is a valid argument towards this end. My problem has to do with both the shear level of complexity, and our own utter ignorance at our own functioning, and what intelligence actually is.
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Never said I was representative of anything. Almost crying over not being able to figure out a hot corner, as opposed to a button in the same location, is a bit hard for me to really sympathize with.
If I sold you a carton of Rocky Road ice cream, and you got home, took a big bite, and discovered it tasted like liverwurst: wouldn't you be pissed too?
Oddly I'm not sure... I think I'd be too confused to actually be pissed.
No, it is WORSE by a lot of analysts standards. Including several well-known pundits of Human-Computer Interaction and UI design.
First; If your so passionate about it, don't use it. Who cares? I don't mind it, so I'll use it.
Also, it follows Fitt's Law rather nicely. Barring multiple monitors the corners are the easiest targets, followed by edges. I never said it was perfect, there has never been a perfect OS from a usability and efficiency standpoint, and there never will be one. OS X came close, but even Apple mucked up their own rules for more visual flash over function.
Further; when I hear the word "pundit" I replace it with "blah blah blah". A pundit is just a loud person with an opinion, they don't have a privileged point of view. Pundits opinions don't matter much more than anyone else's, and thus really aren't worth listening to.
Win 8 could be much better. I don't like the fact that its two OSs tacked together, rather crudely. But I also don't think its the end of the world, or unusable. I, for example, really like the new Start screen, I like tiles. They display information in a clearer fashion than just "little icon - title", I also like being able to group tiles in ways that fit how I work. I don't mind it being a different screen, since it doesn't really disrupt my work flow (having the desktop disappear for 1 second isn't a hindrance to people with normal memories and attention spans). I also think it looks nice, which is a nice plus.
It doesn't take up the whole screen with alerts. A little bar pops up on the top right corner, and slowly fades away. Just like every other alert system. It only takes up your whole screen if you tell it too.
The Charms bar is an annoyance, and doesn't fit in. I agree. The difference between the top left program list, and alt-tab annoys me. The lack of "close" buttons on Metro apps annoys me. The lack of Metro tiling options annoys me to. Having options scattered all about the UI like they put the control panel and shot it from a shotgun is also plenty annoying. Also the bottom right corner is bizarre in desktop mode. Almost to the corner hides windows just like in 7, but 2 pixels to the right and it opens the charms bar... Also, why the hell does the charms bar have a windows button, of there is the same thing on the far left, which require less work to get to?
On the other hand, a single day spent using it normally was sufficient to use it as efficiently as Windows 7. And now I don't even notice, I hardly ever go to the Start screen, because my taskbar is set up just like in Win 7. I rarely have to dig into options, because its set up. I pretty much ignore Metro apps, outside a snazzy Pandora app, the weather app, the People app, and Netflix. Meanwhile, the OS is more responsive, files copy faster and gives me more input, my USB wifi now wakes from sleep like it should (which was worth the money in itself...), and the task manager is brilliant.
Finally, it is you who is the minority of people. A majority of users found fault with the OS for various reasons...
Bully for them. Are these the same people that thought that the Ribbon in Office was going to break into their house and murder their pets? Or are these the people who hated Vista with great passion, even though after the first couple of months it was as stable as XP (or at least I've had the same amount of BSODs in Vista as Win 7, in roughly the same amount of time). People have different reasons for liking things, or disliking them. I only care about what works for ME. Everyone else could go jump in a lake for all I care. Hell, I use, and like Linux as well, which on the desktop, use wise, is the most irrelevant OS in the world, by popular opinion. Same for OS X, until recently. Obviously these are inferior, because they aren't as popular.
Also psychology plays a role. A majority of people HATE change. This is a weakness in them, it doesn't really reflect on
They really should have pushed that. I didn't even know that it existed, and I generally try to stay in front of stuff like this.
But, damn, thats an expensive gadget, for something that I would only consider an "convenience" feature. Why not push this, instead of "touch"?
You figure it out once, and it isn't a problem anymore. It isn't that difficult. Really, if you need to complain about Win 8, there are hundreds of more valid complaints. Seriously, I figured it out in TWO SECONDS.
Buy your reasoning, we never should have gotten GUIs, even. Since for the 20 years previous to Mac OS or Windows we were all happy with arcane text commands. We shouldn't have gotten a Start button to begin with, since it didn't exist previous with 95.
Yeah right, surely you sat down in front of an PC XT and started randomly banging the keyboard until you somehow accidentally typed DIR B:, and then figured it out from there.
Kind of. My first computer, the C64, came in a box with no instructions. It it have a shoe-box full of floppies though, some with hand printed labels. So we spent a lot of time going through all the floppies and trying to piece together how to actually run things, how to get directories, etc... Just from scrapping it all together from cryptic labels.
Later, though, yes, we found some books. But there still has a fair amount of just trying stuff until something interesting happened.
Which is exactly the complaint about Win8. Other than a 5 second animation when you first install, there's no tutorial mode or on-screen hints instructing the user what to do. Manual? forget about it.
This is a problem. And it does feel pretty arrogant on MS's part. Though, really, it isn't that hard to just Google it. I looked at several Youtube videos before thinking about purchasing it. The difference between then, and now, is the availability and ease of access on information. We had to suss it out ourselves, and only later did I have to actually find a place (brick and mortar) that sold books on how to use it at a higher level. Now you just look it up, and all that information is yours in a fraction of a second.
It still is a problem, though, don't get me wrong.
And while you were sitting at home reading computer manuals, the other kids were out socializing and getting good at sports. It's hilarious how nerds judge everyone by their own introverted lifestyle.
Wow... I'm glad you were hiding in my house when I was a child. We also rode bikes, skateboarded, and socialized. We had a decent sized neighborhood DnD group, since the guy across the street used to write for TSR, and another guy used to work with Steve Jackson. I had several blue ribbons from track and field events, and was generally picked first for soccer. I was also pretty active in the scouts.
Also, I'd say, in the grand scheme of things, learning how to dissect computers is more important than kicking a ball around, in the long run. Wow, you sure were good at kicking a ball when you were ten... so how is that applicable to anything useful, or meaningful, in life?
Further, if you hate nerds, why are you even visiting this site? You realize, even visiting here means your probably a nerd.
Try supporting an office full of average, run of the mill, people sometime and your perspective might change. "People" are not you or me. Even if they are experts in some other area, the majority of them will need training for any major computer related change. Most of them are afraid to change even the most simple settings because they think they might break something or might get in to trouble. And in some environments many settings are often locked down anyway.
This is a good point. I wasn't thinking about it from a support, or organizational point of view... In a less formal home environment I think my premise stands, though. Banging your keyboard until something neat (or terrible) happens is great for the living room, but pretty bad in the office.
And just because you don't mind doing something a harder way (or even if it happens to work better for you) doesn't mean that it is OK to force that way on to everyone else.
In a corporate environment, force is the name of the game. I don't want to use Windows 7, I like XP. I don't want to use XP, I like 98se, I don't want 98, I want 95, I don't want 95, I want 3.11, I don't want 3.11 I want DOS... etc... all the way down to changing vacuum tubes, and punch cards. I'm not saying that Win 8 is superior, or even very good (thats mostly opinion and thus irrelevant), but things always change, and people are always uncomfortable... Does this mean we should never change?
That said, I do feel for all the poor corporate nerds out there who will have to explain Win 8 to novice users. I dread the day my own dad needs to use it, since it breaks conventions ENOUGH to confuse him. But then again, he still doesn't know what a tab is, or that he can have more than one window open (which is odd, considering the name of the OS).
What a wonderful future that will be where instead of one device capable of doing lots of things we have lots of individual devices dedicated to a single purpose.
Which is actually what I do.
My DLSR is thousands of time better than my phone's camera. When I don't want to carry my huge, fragile, and expensive camera with me, I was a little Olympus mirrorless, that still takes better pictures than my phone, and pretty much (with a small, pancake prime) fits in my pocket.
My iPod is better than my phone's music player. It has more battery life, and when the battery dies I'm not left in the cold. It can hold more music, and I actually own said music (as opposed to rent). Cloud players are great, but my iPod doesn't eat into my limited data cap that Verizon forced on me this year.
My Nook is many times more convenient than trying to read a full novel on my itty-bitty, backlit, phone screen. Same thing as the ipod, too, if my Nook's battery dies I'm out of reading material, if my phone's dies, I'm screwed. Further, I've also been known to carry Real Paper(tm) books, or Dead Pulp(tm) magazines.
I'm almost at the point where I want to carry a 7" tablet, and a dumb phone (like a Nokia brick), instead of a "smart"phone. Smartphones kind of suck at everything. And by trying to do everything they compromise the most important aspect, being a PHONE. Right now, my phone can barely carry a charge throughout the day, with normal use, if I use GPS on it, I'll probably have to keep it plugged in the cigarette lighter outlet. The voice quality is suspect (and has been on everyone smartphone I've used or owned). Using the internet on them, or typing anything more than "c u 2nite"-type-drivel is annoying.
If even one of the programs I use are a "metro" program, I am not able to use regular windows programs at the same time.
This annoys me as well. But on the bright side, there isn't a single "Metro" program... er... "app"... that I actually want to, or need to, use. And I doubt that there will be any for a long time... They lack the ability to really ever fill the role of a serious "desktop mode" program.
It does hit the main flaw of Windows 8 on the head though; the jarring disconnect between "Metro" and traditional Windows. It does feel like to operating systems tacked together, and not a unified whole. No matter how good the two base systems are, they suffer from the way they are joined. Windows 8 has schizophrenia.
I still don't mind it, but every once in awhile this disjoint hits me in the face.
Jimmy Carter blamed the 'crisis of American spirit' on the American people themselves.
And he was probably right... I find it amusing that we're (Americans) not allowed to find fault with ourselves or our culture. And God forbid that someone ever points out that we might suffer some very deep, very pervasive, systemic problems, both in culture, and society.
I love the "Great American Tautology"; we're the best country on Earth, because we're America, and America is the best.
What makes me sad, is that as a child, younger than 10, me and the neighbor kid sat around over a summer and learned, with no previous experience, how to use, play games on, and finally program for the Commodore 64. I also had to figure out how to use DOS, with no experience. I also had to figure out Windows 3.11, again with no help, or experience. My parents didn't help, since computers were magical devices, that ran on unicorn farts, to them.
And now its a sad, sad, thing that children can't figure out how to use a hot corner, without parental involvement and concern. And worse, they almost cry because of it.
This has nothing to do with Windows 8 being good or bad... But what happened to letting kids learn things, on their own, the hard way? If a replacing a button with a hot corner is considered too daunting for our children, then I'm somewhat frightened of what the future may hold for us.
And people DO NOT just magically adapt to doing something new, especially when the new way is worse.
People, by your use, must be absolute morons. It took me less than 10 minutes to be able to use Win 8 as proficiently as I was using Win 7. Hot corners aren't new, or magical. And really, the Start hot corner is in the SAME EXACT place as the Start Button is! If you can't figure it out after doing it once, the problem rests with the user, not MS.
I don't mind it, personally. You do. It is a completely subjective judgement, it isn't "worse". It is worse for YOU. Its merely different, which doesn't make something worse or better. There are some bits of Win 8 that I would say are objectively worse (alt-tab being programs+apps, but top-right hot-corner being only apps. Different interface on apps and programs... i.e. the overall lack of consistency in UI interactions), but changing the behavior of the start menu isn't one of them.
The bottom left corner of the screen... It isn't THAT difficult. Its in the same place as the Win 95-7 start button. You get it once, and after that how is it a big deal?
The lack of DVD playback, out of the box, would be a terrible PitA for normal users though. What the hell were they thinking for that? Is it to force people to upgrade to the Media Whatnot edition? Or were they too cheap to pay the meager licensing? Probably something like this; "tablets don't need it, so desktops don't need it".
I do wish I could have been a fly on the wall when they were planning this.
... He is doing a great job running Microsoft into the ground
Why would you want less competition in the OS market? So we're forced to live under Apple? So we're forced to get Linux desktops, and live with all its issues. I hope MS sticks around, personally. I like having the ability to choose what OS I want to use (and more often than not, I have all three running at the same time, in the same house).
That said, while I don't think that Windows 8 is as bad as the internet wants me to thing, the touch thing has led to some problems. The whole damn OS feels schizophrenic. On the desktop it is merely "okay", to Win 7's "very good". This evalution only holds true in the interface, design domain, technically Win 8 is a bit better.
I was really hoping that MS would unveil some sort of Kinect style device for the PC, especially for using Win 8. Not to replace traditional input methods, but to supplement it. I wouldn't mind being able to sit back, with my feet up. and scroll pages by waving my fingers. Having to reach closer to the monitor, leaning in, to do the same thing is just a stupid idea. I'm not really sure what MS was thinking.
That said, their x86 tablet is a brilliant idea. I'd love a tablet that allowed me to run almost any desktop program with the convenience of modern Android/iOS devices; as opposed to the gimped mobile apps. I'd love the ability to stick an SD card in my tablet in the field, and use Photoshop or Lightroom. Or have access to a real word processor with a Bluetooth keyboard, rather than the simplistic versions I have to use now.
That said, I'm not going to lay down $1000 for this convenience. Get it close to the price of an iPad, and I'd pick it any day. Hell, I even like the GUI-formerly-know-as-Metro more than iOS or stock Jelly Bean, its prettier.
Reading books doesn't inform you what people currently think a "social contract" is.
Maybe not, but just because some people think it means something different than originally intended, it doesn't not devalue the original idea. Hobbs, Locke, and Rousseau, and company, don't disappear because someone has a different spin on the turn. Actually, if you look at that list, you'll notice they had different spins on the same concept as well.
In your own words:
Those weren't my words. Nor are they my ideas. I actually think the poster misused the term "social contract" in this case. He instead meant a social or legal obligation, which is a different thing.
Nope. Future promised benefits for current payment is fundamentally insecure because the promised benefits aren't sure to happen. And the "mismanaged" aspect is just a manifestation of this.
Nothing is sure to happen, does this mean we shouldn't bother with anything? If they weren't mismanaged, and no one was allowed to touch those funds, then how would they be insecure?
Hey, I'm not the largest fan of how SS works. But it is better than nothing. A safety net might be a big bad "entitlement", but in the view of the lives of actual people, it is a necessary thing. I'm also a fan of not having to work until the day I die, and having a small modicum of security right now. I''ve got money in various long term saving schemes, but I trust the market less than I trust the government. Recent history gives good reason for this (as stated, my parent's 401k lost half of its value in a little over a week).
Please don't read more into that statement than was intended. I think the market is fine for 99% of things, and I distrust the government on 75% of things.
Too bad. What "social contract" implies to me is a bunch of bleating sheep trying to get more out than they put in
Wow... I'm actually almost speechless. Obviously not completely, since I'm writing this... but... Wow.
Have you actually ever read a book on politics, or the evolution of government, or even about what our Founding Fathers were thinking, and basing their creation around? You realize that the idea of a "social contract" is pretty much vital to the reasoning that lead to the founding of the US, and all the Libertarian and Constitutional ideas that people like to bandy around?
Seriously, if some very smart people never developed the theory of the social contract, you'd still be living in a kingdom, as a serf.
I similarly flush money on various mandatory social welfare schemes (in the US, Social Security, unemployment insurance, Medicare/Medicaid, etc), but I don't have an expectation that these will be around when I need them.
Why not? My parents are currently reaping the Social Security that they sowed for 50 years. They also are receiving all that Medicare that they paid into... Its amazing! Perhaps your view is the problem, I expect to get the benefits of what I pay into, so I'm invested in the health and longevity of these programs. I don't see why I should expect less out of life than my parents.
You are ENTITLED to Social Security, because you pay into Social Security. I'm also entitled to my bank giving back the money in my checking account, because I payed INTO my checking account. Same thing. I'm also going to be ENTITLED to Medicare, since I've paid into it my whole life. I'm ENTITLED to police and fire service, since I've paid into them my whole life, via taxes. I'm entitled to every other government service (military protection, economic protections, a body of law, enforcement of said laws, fair elections, and generally keeping me safe from big guys who I have no individual way of protecting myself from) because I PAY for them. I am entitled. As are you. As is every other tax payer in the country. Just like I'm entitled to my paycheck, because I give my labor to an employer, via a contract.
, I'd rather save money and try to make a stand myself. Self-reliance isn't perfect, but it's a lot easier to listen to than whiny dependent entitlement.
And then something happens, and you're screwed by random chance. My father's 401k lost over half its value a year before he was supposed to retire. Luckily he as Social Security and a Union pension. Otherwise he'd be living with me and my girlfriend, or on the streets living off handouts. Self-reliance is fine, until you realize that there are tons of circumstances completely out of your control, and thus the consequences aren't yours to control. This might not be a problem for some, but it is to me, since I am not a sociopath.
And who's going to take care of the next generation? Pension schemes, private and public, world-wide are failing because they too often can't pay out what they promise. It's a near universal problem. Taking care of people is nice, but not when it's at the expense of other people who won't get that care. Creating unsustainable systems doesn't help in the long run.
By nature pension schemes and social security are secure. You get out, what you pay in. They fail because they are mismanaged. Our government, and many unions, used them as slush funds, and now they are hurting. Its like the head of your company using the profits derived from your labor to buy a nice new yacht, and then deducting it from your wages.
Unalienable rights are not entitlements. They exist without effort, without cause without demanding from anyone or anything else.
Where do these "unalienable rights" come from, and if they are without effort please explain all the effort that was required to secure them, and force others to recognize them? None of these "unalienable" "effortless" rights came without a fight, and often they were carved from what others viewed as their rights (kings, the aristocracy, white men, etc...). Rights come from something, they aren't a priori, they didn't spring up ex nihilo, they have to have a source to mean anything. You can't claim they are natural, since they didn't exist for 90% of human history (and didn't exist, obviously, before humans), and many of them don't exist for much of the world now. Rights are just a social contract, they exist wholly within the society that recognizes them, and they only matter because we recognize them. They aren't magic. There has been huge fights, even in recent history, over CLAIMING rights.
Taking a long view, an "entitlement" is just a "right" that hasn't been accepted yet. What would be the difference between being "entitled" to healthcare, or education, and having a recognized "right" to them?
There is a sense of shame when one doesn't meet their obligations, where here in the west, especially in the US, the whole goal of political body seems to be to get (increase) what you are "entitled" to, while incurring no "obligations" at all. Someone else will bail you out.
If the obligations don't benefit the society as a whole, and the people who constituted that society, then those obligations are suspect. If your obligations are legally dictated, and exist only to benefit government or industry, then those obligations aren't valid. This ignores the fact that the west is swimming in obligations, and these obligations are not magically lesser than societies with obligations you are fond of, of were brought up in.
As I stated before, rights exist, apart from and not depending upon anyone or anything else.
And where did they come from? In the billions of years before humans existed, were just just floating around in the air waiting for us to claim them. Are there still rights floating in the ether they we haven't yet discovered? Rights are a social construct.
Either that or it was a normal typo and you're an ass.
I'm still miffed that del Toro didn't get to do the Hobbit. The creature design alone would be awesome.
Not as sad as I am that they forced him to scrap At The Mountains of Madness... If ever a man existed that could actually make the first good Lovecraft movie, del Toro is that man.
My friend always wanted to see Joss Whedon, Kevin Smith, and JJ Abrams collectively direct a Star Wars movie. Joss Whedon can do sci-fi and characters, but would end up making Leia where latex and kill people with her mind, Kevin Smith would be highly respectful of the source material, but would end having everyone sitting around the Death Star food-court talking about nothing, and JJ Abrams can do effects, and battles, but would end up trying to make a very thinly veiled allegory for God, which he would have Darth Vader state at the end ("Luke, I am your Heavenly Father")
I personally want Lars Von Trier, Michael Haneke, or Warner Herzog to direct it... It would be as respectful as the prequels (not at all), but at least it would be intentionally miserable and depressing. And to see Jar Jar slowly go insane, and finally passionless slaughter Obi-wan while drinking apple juice, would be priceless.
The first season was good. The second season was crap. I don't think it was fully Joss Whedon's fault, I think he just rushed to conclude the story in the face of impending cancellation. Though, upon forcing myself to watch almost all of Buffy, this was probably for the best. It started as strong as Firefly or Dollhouse, and then tumbled into a boring, directionless, 90201-with-vampires-and-lesbians, crapper. Which is the exact problem Abrams' has. Lost started strong, but there was a point where it should have ended, and didn't. Fringe was the same... It was an awesome show, but it should have ended at the end of the 3rd or 4th season, but instead it lurched on, directionlessly, like a zombie cash-cow.
Joss Whedon is much more solid though. And this is probably the absolute height of his ability. Cabin in the Woods was absolutely brilliant. Avengers was the first superhero movie that I felt was written by someone who actually LIKED the source material.
JJ Abrams has Cloverfield, and thats it. And I'm still not sure if I like it for reasons that were intentional (it is to 9-11 what Godzilla was to Hiroshima and Nagasaki). The Star Trek reboot was... okay. The plot sucked, and it pretty much covered every trope I hate in modern "big" movies (which is why I don't watch any blockbusters now, unless 10 people I know fully recommend them, minus everyone I know who hated them). The characters were pretty awful. The casting was absolutely brilliant though.
And then compare good time travel plots to the the Star Trek reboot.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the movie, and enjoyed the casting, but the plot was crap.
Actually the characters were mostly crap too.
In a modern computer every effort is made to isolate the circuits from "cross talk", the natural system uses this feature to produce intelligence. None of our computer circuits get fatigued yet that is part of Intelligence computations.
This is a problem with making a "human style intelligence", but not an intelligence in general. My theory is that AI is possible (again, very very hard, but possible), but any real attempt will create an alien intelligence, something not recognizable as human. If a computer was intelligent in this way, how would we measure it, how could we ever be sure? How could we relate to it?
Creating a "human style intelligence" is very tricky for the reasons you put forth. But we do have to wonder if you need a human brain to form a consciousness, or if the physical medium is incidental. Is a 1:1 scale brain really a prerequisite to human-like intellect?
2. Kurzweil is on the dubious side of strong AI. Waaay over.
You will never catch me arguing in favor of Kurzweil's sanity. Ever. He wants a God AI, so he can be immortal, and this flavors pretty much everything he does.
Also, it is not obvious at all that everything that might be available to experience is reducible to a physical description. You seem to assume that.
I do assume this, since the alternative is meaningless, or at least not something we can do anything with intellectually. Perhaps someday we'll have a tool for dealing with intangibles, but right now all we have is science, math, and logic. I'm not arguing in favor of AI, or saying that Kurzweil will have one up and running in a week or ten days. I'm just stating that Strong AI isn't physically impossible, in that it isn't barred by the various laws of the universe. It may or may not come to pass in the distant future. If we can be said to be intelligent, and we are a mere collection of inanimate particles, then it should be possible for any sufficiently complex collection of inanimate particles to also be intelligent. This doesn't mean it is a simple problem, or we're going to be able to tackle it, it is just a logical statement of potentiality.
. When you see a magician at the circus you are not having a serious discussion "how do you know..." now, are you?!
I went to school for philosophy and psychology, I'm pretty much always saying that. Though, if a magic trick was sufficiently magic like, i.e. not explainable by our current understanding of the universe, it would be magic. Even if a trick.
Can you define "complex" as spatial arrangement or anything physical? It is a strictly qualitative term that requires intelligent evaluation. That is the problem... some "complexities" may be irreducible to others.
Now this is an interesting thought. I'd say complexity does't have to be spatial, or strictly physical (think software, or ideas). Farther than this, I'm going to have to give it some thought. I do know that there are objective ways of measuring it some branches of science and math, but as to how much that has with the potential of emergent behavior, I have no clue. Irreducible complexities is also an interesting idea. I'm not sure about them, or their existence. But this is one of my problems with AI, building a mind from the top down (sure, we say bottom up, but there is a goal at the top which informs the bottom), is strange. As is the fact that a machine intelligence would have any relation to our messy, accidental, biologic flavor. Get rid of the reductionism, and irreducible complexity would no longer be an issue.
You may not realize how indebted modern science and AI is to Descartes... it is Cartesian through and through and not going anywhere right now.
In method it is Cartesian, in substance not so much. Substance isn't wax. Further, it is Cartesian more so in his works on science and math than his actual metaphysics.
. Artificial life would mean humans making something alive out of something else that is not.
Odd, humans are living things made out of things that aren't. Artificial life is vastly simpler than AI though, since life has to meet a limited number of simple criteria to be alive. Intelligence is more problematic, since we really don't even know what it means, it requires a huge amount of complexity, and we have no idea how, or why we're intelligent.
"Intelligence" is my second most despised term (after "rights"), we don't have a universal definition for it, much less a definition that can be generalized outside of humans to other species, or even machines. This leads to a problem, are we talking about machines that can be generally intelligent (learning, problems solving, and coping with novelty), or machines that act like humans? The former is very possible, the latter is much more dubious. Also, what human aspects are necessary for something to be called intelligent? Creativity? Emotion? Irrationality? Social behaviors? Language?
That said, AI exists, in limited forms right now. Strong AI is the pie in the sky, and for some reason we keep confusing them. AI is very real. Human-like thinking machines are something else entirely.
Humans intellect also disappears like circus magic. We are very capable of losing out "higher facilities" and turning into reflex, instict, and irrationality, or falling back on mostly obsolete evolved behavior.
An artifice would mean making something seem alive when it is not.
"seem"... this word is useless. If something acts intelligent, then "seeming" intelligent becomes meaningless. How can you prove it isn't? If inputs give the expected output, it is intelligent for all useful purposes. Unless there is some sort of magical "stuff" that makes us intelligent, of course. Look up p-zombies, or the various refutations of Searle's Chinese room thought experiment.
We are nothing but a bunch of atoms (not living, not intelligent), arranged into simple structures (amino acids) (not living, not intelligent), arranged into slightly more complex structures (proteins) (not living, not intelligent), arranged into slightly more complex structures (cells) (mostly not living, not intelligent), arranged into slightly more complicated structures (mostly not living, not intelligent), arranged into a big slightly more complex whole (living, intelligent). Why would we be special? Why couldn't a machine be intelligent? It would be a bunch of atoms arranged into increasingly more complex (but dead and dumb) structures just like us. Do we have special sauce that makes it possible for our dead and dumb structure, but no others?
We verge on Cartesian dualism here.
To be clear, I don't think strong AI is possible, at least not for a long long time. But I don't think that yours is a valid argument towards this end. My problem has to do with both the shear level of complexity, and our own utter ignorance at our own functioning, and what intelligence actually is.