> Searle's argument is just...an 'axiom' that has > no empirical support whatsoever, namely > that "understanding" is something special that > lies outside the mechanical operation of rules
I don't think he said this. He doesn't deny machines can think -- we are one such machine, he says. He just denies that "we", as in the subjective you, arise purely out of the information content of the machinery of our brains. You simulate a brain with water buckets and pipes, or a Chinese room, or a silicon chip, and, although it might think as far as any interaction with it could possibly determine, there would be no internal mental "me" in there.
The big philosophical issue is, of course, that neither case makes much sense. On the one hand, why wouldn't it arise? On the other, why would it? It would make for a fine experiment, but then we run into the problem of when we flipped on the switch, said artificial brain would immediately report that it was self-aware, that it "perceived" colors, and so on. How would we tell then? We can't.
Not until we figure out more of the physical basis of the subjective perceptual experience. (Physics, note, bails on this since you can't objectively demonstrate this in people other than yourself. Then book selling gurus start blathering about quantum mechanics, and it all goes downhill from there.)
And at the bachelor party you put your winkies through a hole in the wall and tried to decide whether it was a woman or gay man on the other side, trying to answer the eternal question as to whether a woman really understands what's going on, or is just pushing symbols around according to fixed rules, uncomprehending.
Is that Chinese room argument any different from saying there's a little gremlin in your brain pushing the atoms through your nerve cells according to fixed rules? No, the gremlin, nor the brain-as-machine don't "think", but you, the instantiation of that thinking, do. "The universe", playing the part of the man in the room here, doesn't "think" anymore than he does, though it does the dirty work of physically running your brain.
> I know that I think, how do I know that you do, > other than the fact that we are both human?
I do believe this was Turing's whole point. It wasn't meant as some kind of practical test, but a jumping off point for thought about that very issue. Since you can't see into someone's mind to co-experience their thoughts and perceptions (direct knowledge) then some other kind of interaction must be what we actually do every day. Denied the ability to see they were the "same stuff" as you, i.e. a body, head, etc., just what would you do?
There's also the problem that most people assume thinking is synonymous with the subjective perceptual experience. That the experience of blue you have when looking at the sky, say, is inextricably intertwined with thought.
I can easily envision a machine capable of thought exactly as we do without that machine necessarily being subjectively "alive".
Until physics comes up with a way to explain the very real subjective experience that I, and probably most of you, have, there'll be a big chunk missing.
I can envision a machine emulating atoms and whatnot, including an entire brain, digitally, to any desired physical degree. Flip the switch, and the "brain" would interact just as a human's would. The $64,000 question is would it have a subjective perceptual experience? Would such a thing be required for thought? Would it arise out of the pure information interaction, as some suggest, or is it something peculiar to our particular molecular machine, as Searle seems to think?
They did say that gamma rays are stopped at the upper atmosphere. Moreover, assuming it was a problem, only the side of the planet facing the supernova would have a problem.
Besides, we all know intense gamma ray bursts turn you into, well, I'm sure someone's mentioned it by now. A TERRIBLE LOOKING CGI ENTITY!
Yeah, everyone knows the big oil companies and dubya (an American oil man hisself) are behind the Iraq invasion to cause oil prices to collapse so American oil companies will become even more unprofitable. Texas is just roaring from the oil companies, and lower oil prices will make it roar still more!
> Slashdot requires you to wait 2 minutes between > each successful posting of a comment to allow > everyone a fair chance at posting a comment. > > It's been -281 seconds since you last > successfully posted a comment
I suppose the math does work out.
Update: We're at -85 seconds and counting. I feel so...Langolierish.
Ahhh, they're coming!!!!! The present time approaches! My god, the teeth!
It is, but Michael Moore is from Michigan. He's the same ass who blathered at the Oscars last week.
Let's see, Jeff Daniels and, umm, Booger are from Michigan. That's pretty much it. Oh, and Madonna. And Tim the Tool, who would have been in jail for the rest of his life with no parole had he been charged under Michigan drug laws instead of Federal ones.
I plug my lame EnviroToilet every 3rd day that the State of Michigan makes me use to conserve water even though we are the most water rich place on the planet. That shows the brainpower of our own Michigan legislature.
By the way, the Michigan state house and senate are Republican controlled, and the govnuh is a Democrat. There's plenty of blame to go around.
> However, since TOS didn't really prove they > were using CRTs (even in the movies
For god's sake, engines "NOMINAL" while trying to escape Kahn at the end was on a CRT and looked like a teenager had whipped it up using Basic on a TRS-80.
Actually, if it were completely about oil, us inbred, amoral, soulless Americans would have gotten rid of the sanctions long ago so he could dump oil on the market and build his military back up, rebuild his nuke plant, etc.
Sorry your cathartic, American-hating fantasy world doesn't match up to reality.
> Yes, good science fiction is all about internal > consistency.
And good Simpsons episodes. Giant tiki head and used I Didn't Do It Boy Dolls at garage sale, cement cast angel "skeleton" in garbage wall, etc.
Homer to Marge: "You know, I've had a lot of jobs: boxer, mascot, astronaut, imitation Krusty, baby proofer, trucker, hippie, plow driver, food critic, conceptual artist, grease salesman, carnie, mayor, grifter, bodyguard for the mayor, country western manager, garbage commissioner, mountain climber, farmer, inventor, Smithers, Poochie, celebrity assistant, power plant worker, fortune cookie writer, beer baron, Kwik-E-Mart clerk, homophobe and missionary, but protecting Springfield...that gives me the best feeling of all. "
And, to be anal retentive, did anyone catch last week's episode where they briefly showed the atomic power plant's org chart, at the top, Burns, and at the bottom below dozens of employees and managers was a picture of the inanimate carbon rod, and below that, Homer?
Anyhoo, cool time travel: Controlled emergency implosion of cold antimatter in warp engines puts Enterprise travelling faster than possible in normal space (faster than light, no "warping".)
Lame, jump-the-shark time travel: slingshotting around the sun (lame to the second power: in a Klingon PT boat to save some whales)
This sums up Nemisis: I took my 12 year old to see it. I watch the buggy shit, about to cry at how lame it was. Later on, the 12 year old says how dumb the movie was, but the buggy chase was "kinda cool."
Reminds me of the nameless director in charge of Jurassic Park II, stating something like "Kids tell me don't take so long to get to the dinosaurs, so we're GETTING RIGHT TO THE DINOSAURS!"
> It would be a much more interesting (and > realistic) show, and maybe it would teach us > some humility, which we badly need these days.
Actually it would teach you pride as the Federation, a (relatively) free society, caught up and passed less free societies more interested in lording over their own people than in keeping trade open and, ahem, prosperous.
> and [Federation using a cloaking device] would > probably piss off the romulans
Actually, if it went around invisible all the time, then you couldn't see a nifty space ship. Hence the Federation can't use one because it would decrease ratings. Hence they need a lame, "in-series" reason not to have one.
It's too bad the Federation didn't have a Ronald Reagan to ratchet up the arms race until the Romulans collapsed. The Klingons did, but they keep getting resurrected because, gosh, they're such a nifty villain!
Come to think of it, a Ronald Reagan type couldn't ratchet up anything in the Federation given that they are not really a capitalist, freedom-based society. They'd be like a retarded Europe lagging grotesquely and further each year behind the US, all the while patting themselves on the back.
There was a web site where someone analyzed the Federation, pointing out how much of their truly advanced stuff was done by outcasts on the edge of the Federation./nerd mode Quite frankly, the Federation should take a modified Data/M5 hybrid, load it up with that phased cloak on the latest starship, issue it a few Genesis devices, and go take out the Borg once and for all. To hell with the Andorian's "vetos", the cowards!
> As good looking as Jolene Blalock might be, I > really appreciate that they've cut back on the > gratuitous scenes with her.
Actually, they need to do two things:
1. Change T'Pok's hair. It helped on the Pixie on Voyager. Sadly, that was about 2 episodes before they got rid of her.
2. Put Hoshi in an Uhura-like miniskirt. More Hoshi. More Hoshi. More Hoshi!
Seven made Voyager a lot more interesting. Scrawney isn't built enuf to save Enterprise, so they'll have to pull Hoshi out more. She may be a bit slender, too, but at she's a lot prettire than T'pot anyhoo.
There used to be a website that would look up the personal information of the spammers and publish it.
I remember reading about one teenager, and they published his father's company phone number and said, "If you wanna ask his father why he does this, here's his number."
Another spammer had an anti-spammer break in and find topless photos of the spammer (a female.)
Needless to say these might be illegal, but are they still around?
Slashdot Mirror
> Searle's argument is just...an 'axiom' that has
> no empirical support whatsoever, namely
> that "understanding" is something special that
> lies outside the mechanical operation of rules
I don't think he said this. He doesn't deny machines can think -- we are one such machine, he says. He just denies that "we", as in the subjective you, arise purely out of the information content of the machinery of our brains. You simulate a brain with water buckets and pipes, or a Chinese room, or a silicon chip, and, although it might think as far as any interaction with it could possibly determine, there would be no internal mental "me" in there.
The big philosophical issue is, of course, that neither case makes much sense. On the one hand, why wouldn't it arise? On the other, why would it? It would make for a fine experiment, but then we run into the problem of when we flipped on the switch, said artificial brain would immediately report that it was self-aware, that it "perceived" colors, and so on. How would we tell then? We can't.
Not until we figure out more of the physical basis of the subjective perceptual experience. (Physics, note, bails on this since you can't objectively demonstrate this in people other than yourself. Then book selling gurus start blathering about quantum mechanics, and it all goes downhill from there.)
And at the bachelor party you put your winkies through a hole in the wall and tried to decide whether it was a woman or gay man on the other side, trying to answer the eternal question as to whether a woman really understands what's going on, or is just pushing symbols around according to fixed rules, uncomprehending.
Is that Chinese room argument any different from saying there's a little gremlin in your brain pushing the atoms through your nerve cells according to fixed rules? No, the gremlin, nor the brain-as-machine don't "think", but you, the instantiation of that thinking, do. "The universe", playing the part of the man in the room here, doesn't "think" anymore than he does, though it does the dirty work of physically running your brain.
> I know that I think, how do I know that you do,
> other than the fact that we are both human?
I do believe this was Turing's whole point. It wasn't meant as some kind of practical test, but a jumping off point for thought about that very issue. Since you can't see into someone's mind to co-experience their thoughts and perceptions (direct knowledge) then some other kind of interaction must be what we actually do every day. Denied the ability to see they were the "same stuff" as you, i.e. a body, head, etc., just what would you do?
There's also the problem that most people assume thinking is synonymous with the subjective perceptual experience. That the experience of blue you have when looking at the sky, say, is inextricably intertwined with thought.
I can easily envision a machine capable of thought exactly as we do without that machine necessarily being subjectively "alive".
Until physics comes up with a way to explain the very real subjective experience that I, and probably most of you, have, there'll be a big chunk missing.
I can envision a machine emulating atoms and whatnot, including an entire brain, digitally, to any desired physical degree. Flip the switch, and the "brain" would interact just as a human's would. The $64,000 question is would it have a subjective perceptual experience? Would such a thing be required for thought? Would it arise out of the pure information interaction, as some suggest, or is it something peculiar to our particular molecular machine, as Searle seems to think?
> Most of the amateur scientist posts rather than
> commenting on the experiment tried to wrap
> their feeble minds around "frictionless"
Lotta good frictionless lube does for sex.
They did say that gamma rays are stopped at the upper atmosphere. Moreover, assuming it was a problem, only the side of the planet facing the supernova would have a problem.
Besides, we all know intense gamma ray bursts turn you into, well, I'm sure someone's mentioned it by now. A TERRIBLE LOOKING CGI ENTITY!
He did say "billions" billions of times, but never said "billions and billions" (except later as a joke.) It was Johnny Carson who said that.
And someday, grasshopper, you'll understand Sansabelt brand fatman slacks.
Fuck the laser rifle. Where's the God damned orgasmoball?
Yeah, everyone knows the big oil companies and dubya (an American oil man hisself) are behind the Iraq invasion to cause oil prices to collapse so American oil companies will become even more unprofitable. Texas is just roaring from the oil companies, and lower oil prices will make it roar still more!
> Slashdot requires you to wait 2 minutes between
> each successful posting of a comment to allow
> everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.
>
> It's been -281 seconds since you last
> successfully posted a comment
I suppose the math does work out.
Update: We're at -85 seconds and counting. I feel so...Langolierish.
Ahhh, they're coming!!!!! The present time approaches! My god, the teeth!
It is, but Michael Moore is from Michigan. He's the same ass who blathered at the Oscars last week.
Let's see, Jeff Daniels and, umm, Booger are from Michigan. That's pretty much it. Oh, and Madonna. And Tim the Tool, who would have been in jail for the rest of his life with no parole had he been charged under Michigan drug laws instead of Federal ones.
I plug my lame EnviroToilet every 3rd day that the State of Michigan makes me use to conserve water even though we are the most water rich place on the planet. That shows the brainpower of our own Michigan legislature.
By the way, the Michigan state house and senate are Republican controlled, and the govnuh is a Democrat. There's plenty of blame to go around.
> It became cheaper and easier for them to have
> customers using DTMF
My dad still refuses to pay the extra $2/month for touch tone dialing.
> However, since TOS didn't really prove they
> were using CRTs (even in the movies
For god's sake, engines "NOMINAL" while trying to escape Kahn at the end was on a CRT and looked like a teenager had whipped it up using Basic on a TRS-80.
Actually, if it were completely about oil, us inbred, amoral, soulless Americans would have gotten rid of the sanctions long ago so he could dump oil on the market and build his military back up, rebuild his nuke plant, etc.
Sorry your cathartic, American-hating fantasy world doesn't match up to reality.
> Yes, good science fiction is all about internal
> consistency.
And good Simpsons episodes. Giant tiki head and used I Didn't Do It Boy Dolls at garage sale, cement cast angel "skeleton" in garbage wall, etc.
Homer to Marge: "You know, I've had a lot of jobs: boxer, mascot, astronaut, imitation Krusty, baby proofer, trucker, hippie, plow driver, food critic, conceptual artist, grease salesman, carnie, mayor, grifter, bodyguard for the mayor, country western manager, garbage commissioner, mountain climber, farmer, inventor, Smithers, Poochie, celebrity assistant, power plant worker, fortune cookie writer, beer baron, Kwik-E-Mart clerk, homophobe and missionary, but protecting Springfield...that gives me the best feeling of all. "
And, to be anal retentive, did anyone catch last week's episode where they briefly showed the atomic power plant's org chart, at the top, Burns, and at the bottom below dozens of employees and managers was a picture of the inanimate carbon rod, and below that, Homer?
Now there's a series with internal consistency.
> BAN FKG TIME TRAVELLING
Here here! (Or is that Hear hear!?)
Anyhoo, cool time travel: Controlled emergency implosion of cold antimatter in warp engines puts Enterprise travelling faster than possible in normal space (faster than light, no "warping".)
Lame, jump-the-shark time travel: slingshotting around the sun (lame to the second power: in a Klingon PT boat to save some whales)
This sums up Nemisis: I took my 12 year old to see it. I watch the buggy shit, about to cry at how lame it was. Later on, the 12 year old says how dumb the movie was, but the buggy chase was "kinda cool."
Reminds me of the nameless director in charge of Jurassic Park II, stating something like "Kids tell me don't take so long to get to the dinosaurs, so we're GETTING RIGHT TO THE DINOSAURS!"
> It would be a much more interesting (and
> realistic) show, and maybe it would teach us
> some humility, which we badly need these days.
Actually it would teach you pride as the Federation, a (relatively) free society, caught up and passed less free societies more interested in lording over their own people than in keeping trade open and, ahem, prosperous.
> and [Federation using a cloaking device] would
/nerd mode
> probably piss off the romulans
Actually, if it went around invisible all the time, then you couldn't see a nifty space ship. Hence the Federation can't use one because it would decrease ratings. Hence they need a lame, "in-series" reason not to have one.
It's too bad the Federation didn't have a Ronald Reagan to ratchet up the arms race until the Romulans collapsed. The Klingons did, but they keep getting resurrected because, gosh, they're such a nifty villain!
Come to think of it, a Ronald Reagan type couldn't ratchet up anything in the Federation given that they are not really a capitalist, freedom-based society. They'd be like a retarded Europe lagging grotesquely and further each year behind the US, all the while patting themselves on the back.
There was a web site where someone analyzed the Federation, pointing out how much of their truly advanced stuff was done by outcasts on the edge of the Federation.
Quite frankly, the Federation should take a modified Data/M5 hybrid, load it up with that phased cloak on the latest starship, issue it a few Genesis devices, and go take out the Borg once and for all. To hell with the Andorian's "vetos", the cowards!
> As good looking as Jolene Blalock might be, I
> really appreciate that they've cut back on the
> gratuitous scenes with her.
Actually, they need to do two things:
1. Change T'Pok's hair. It helped on the Pixie on Voyager. Sadly, that was about 2 episodes before they got rid of her.
2. Put Hoshi in an Uhura-like miniskirt. More Hoshi. More Hoshi. More Hoshi!
Seven made Voyager a lot more interesting. Scrawney isn't built enuf to save Enterprise, so they'll have to pull Hoshi out more. She may be a bit slender, too, but at she's a lot prettire than T'pot anyhoo.
This electronic republishing is for the three of you who didn't buy the 30-lb. compilations for $1.98 on the bargain tables at Borders 10 years ago.
There used to be a website that would look up the personal information of the spammers and publish it.
I remember reading about one teenager, and they published his father's company phone number and said, "If you wanna ask his father why he does this, here's his number."
Another spammer had an anti-spammer break in and find topless photos of the spammer (a female.)
Needless to say these might be illegal, but are they still around?
Oh ye ignorant children.
Long before e-mail spam and AOL-on-the-net, there was Usenet group spam that destroyed newsgroups.
A handful of "moderated" groups survived, but I'd hate to be a moderator on one of them.
Thanks. You just fucked him over.