You're a legend in your own mind, no question about it. But you're still 100% wrong. You can't eliminate a basic problem by abstracting parts of it. When (ok, if) you learn that, you'll make better arguments. As for the "jerk" comment, right-o. A legend in your own mind, indeed.
If these stations insist that such experiments are ok, perhaps someone should suggest to them that hammering a spike through the transmission line of their tower might be just as reasonable. You know, just to check their reaction time. After all, after the fuses and output devices are replaced, it'll be as good as new, eh?:-/
Atheism is a belief system, despite what you claim.
To quote someone else, if atheism is a belief system, then bald is a hair color. I hold no beliefs in a god or gods; I am not a theist.
Agnosticism is not a third or middle position, it is simply a red herring. Either you hold beliefs in a god or gods, or you do not. I do not. That makes me an atheist. It's just that simple.
Note that there are other Atheist doctrines as well, such as the Communist regimes of the 60's in China and Russia.
I'll note that atheism has nothing to do with any such thing; there were dedicated and patriotic communist Christians and Muslims, and also dedicated patriotic atheist Americans at that time, and there still are. Atheism carries no political stance. It simply indicates a lack of belief in a god or gods. In no case does atheism lead one to communism. Atheism deals with the supernatural. Not the political. When you try to say that atheism "is" communism or that communism "is" atheism, you're conflating two separate issues that have no tie to one another other than they may be found among people. For instance, I consider myself an American patriot; a constant and vocal supporter of the constitution, an advocate for freedom of religion, and a horrified bystander as our government rushes further and further from the ideals it was legitimately constituted to serve. These are stances that have nothing really to do with the fact that no event or experience in my life has created, fostered or imbued a belief in a god or gods, and that my own philosophy, which is entirely based upon levels of confidence, is superior to any belief-based philosophy. The next atheist you encounter will no doubt vary from these stances, most likely by a great deal. This is because atheism isn't political. It's about god, or gods, and nothing else.
...but a little bit of politeness and seperation of emotion would be more becoming of an Atheist who seemed to have decried Theists as being illogical and/or irrational.
I wrote that government forcing religion on people as being inherently bad. Mind you, the poster I replied to was being both illogical and irrational, not to mention presumptuous and not very bright; but I don't tar all theists with the brush that painted that poster. I carry plenty of emotional loading, and I'm not in the least ashamed of it or inclined to pretend it isn't there. When someone acts like a fool, I'm pretty likely to treat them like a fool. Likewise, when the government is abusive, it makes me upset. This is rational, reasonable and quite human. Finally, respect is earned; it isn't given. Or at least, certainly not by me.
Besides, atheism is just another form of a "religious" belief system.
Atheism is lack of belief in a god or gods. The etymology is "a" (without) "theism" (belief in a god or gods.) It is not a a "belief system", any more than lack of belief in Santa Claus is. Which is to say, not at all.
Besides, why should Christians, Moslems, Buddhists, and others pander to your desire to remove all religious symbols from public life? How is your desire to impose your beliefs on the public any different from what you're bitching about?
I have no such desire. I desire to have religious symbols removed from government operations, not "public life." You want to put up a cross or a giant voodoo doll? Fine. Put it on your lawn; put it on your place of worship, face it to the street and have at it. What I don't want is government showing any favor whatsoever to any particular religion. As an example of the tensions this causes, imagine a Jew or a Muslim being asked to swear on the Christian bible in a US court. Imagine a patriotic atheist being asked to swear to god - to outright lie - to qualify for a military or political position. There is every reason to separate religion from government. That is not the same as separating it from the public, nor do I advocate any such thing.
Even the US Constitution guarantees "freedom OF religion". That's distinctly different from the "freedom FROM religion" that the belief system of anti-religious zealots like you are forcing down everyone else's throat.
The intent of the authors of the constitution is precisely known from the other papers they left as a legacy; that is why the concept of an absolute wall between church and state was established. It isn't there to put religion down; it is there to protect all practitioners of all religions equally. As soon as the government begins to favor people of one religion (as it has, that religion is Christianity) then it begins to marginalize and disadvantage people of other religions. This is best avoided. If you had any idea of how the constitution was crafted, you would have known this.
What makes YOUR anti-religion belief system better than one that accepts another religion? Your air of smug superiority?
I hold no belief in a god or gods. This is not a belief system. There's no system involved. If I ever encounter any evidence at all for a god or gods, I'll take another look. Until then, I have no more reason to believe in one of these religions claims than I do in the claims for the Easter Bunny. This position is better for me. It may very well not be better for you, and I do not claim that it is. However, the government not pushing religion on people is better for everyone, and that includes you and me.
What are you going to do? Claim that because your belief system applies Occam's Razor to an utter lack of evidence, it's BETTER than a religious belief system that isn't based on that particular logical preference? And that gives YOU the right to enforce your belief system on others?
I'm not in the least interested in "enforcing" anything on any citizen. I'm just interested in seeing to it that the government doesn't either. Got it now? Or are these concepts too difficult for you?
So, you think computers exist in a fairytale fantasy? Mines are real, but computers are ethereal phantasms cooked up by the superstitious? Programs aren't switching real states in real machinery? It's all [waves hands vaguely] imaginary?
Look; a thinking mind is a thinking mind. In that sense, it makes no difference if it is established in a human, a computer, or another venue we haven't thought up yet, or if we discover it in another species. Either you respect intelligence or you don't. I do. So I'm never going to agree with your idea that lack of communications magically imbues an intelligence with irrelevance.
No... but somewhere, a computer just set the flag for "irrational behavior" in your file to True. So if they need to come to get you for any reason, they'll probably come with guns drawn. Good job. You really showed them something, didn't you?
If you don't believe evolution is scientifically valid, how can one justify this?
I have extremely high confidence that evolution (and Evolution) is an accurate representation of some of the actual processes that got life where it is today, and I still can't justify animal testing. I think it is cowardly and reveals nothing less than a playground bully mentality. Forcing creatures who cannot defend themselves to take risks on our behalf... it's disgusting.
Should the FDA remove this requirement?
More to the point, should we remove the FDA? Aside from their vicious stance on animal testing, they deny drugs certified safe for humans and shown to be efficacious to dying patients. I doubt the agency can be fixed, either. Better to start over.
we can save quite a bit of money and quite possibly quite a few human lives by forgoing such testing. Plus thousands of furry animals.
Test on volunteers. Record the results in a standardized, useful fashion and make them available to everyone. If volunteers can't be found, don't test. If you want to take a drug, take it. When you do, be willing to be surveyed as to your experience with the drug. Be aware that not all drugs work the same on all subjects. Sometimes that means really bad things. That's life. Keep lawyers out of it. And mostly out of everything else, too.
The original poster wants to have an intelligent discussion, in sound bites, about complex topics, with people ill-equipped to do so.
Come on mods, pay attention. The above line alone should have got the parent post modded to +5 insightful by the very first five moderators that read it. You ARE reading the posts, aren't you?
I'd have to agree. Unless they start stuffing their religion down my throat I could care less how they defend it.
Stuffing... do you mean like forcing everyone else to pay the share of various taxes that churches should pay? Or do you mean like putting religious slogans on money? Or do you mean like putting religious slogans into the national oath, and the pledge of allegiance? Or do you mean by making laws about what you can and cannot do on Sundays? Are you referring to that whole "put your hand on the bible" thing in court? Perhaps you're talking about how atheist and non-Christian soldiers are treated in the military? Or do you mean how the government tries to control religious leaders who get up into the pulpit and speak according to their beliefs against or for a particular candidate? Or are you talking about the recent CBS news affiliate story where it is shown that the government has been going to various religious leaders and telling them to encourage the citizens to give up their weapons in a time of martial law? Is it the presidential speeches that end with a distinctly presumptuous "God bless America"? Or the congressional sessions that are infected with prayer?
Personally, I've been feeling like government has been shoving religion down my throat since I was in first grade public school. But hey — that's just me.
Certainly there is more to qualifying as a human than the brain. And I'm not talking about legal and social matters. There's a whole lot of biology in there too...
Really? If we surgically lift your brain from your body and connect it to artificial sensory inputs and then ask if you are human, you are saying you would answer "no"? If so, what are you at that point? And of course, after having done that, if we ask your now brainless body (presumably on life support as well) a question, what answer do you expect it to give?
If we amputate your leg, are you now not human? Both legs? Both legs and your arms? Cut you off at the neck? Poke out your eyes? remove your eardrums? When do you think that loss of biological function (or perhaps being born without it as in congenital defects) crosses the line into not being human?
I take the view that none of that makes any difference. At all. You're human because you can think and because the general ability to think that you possess is vaguely similar to the ability that the rest of us possess. No more, no less. Being human casts a wide net. Babies are human. Paraplegics are human. Even Hitler, Stalin, Bush and McCarthy qualify as fully human. And should a computer be able to think like we do, then it is just as human as we are.
You said that "any computer intelligence must be capable of interacting with the real world before it can be considered a real person."
I say, that is ethically bankrupt because it is a statement with no meaningful difference from "any intelligence must be capable of interacting with the real world before it can be considered a real person."
You don't have anywhere to go; you dug the hole yourself.
Because being "in the sky" in real life is a visceral sensation... yet the brains of my intelligent friends crave the physicality of flying in real life.
No. In real life, it is a thing of being in a different place. Hovering in a helicopter, you're at one G, no movement. The point is you're in the sky, not on the ground. With a simulator, you're on the ground. And by the way, a good flight simulator can give you a very good set of motions that will give you the stimulation you're talking about, but it still doesn't give you what flying does, because you go nowhere. Flying is transport. Simulation of flying is not. That's why your friends prefer to fly.
...you lack the capacity to correctly and accurately simulate the human experience
Listen to yourself. Are you saying a paraplegic isn't human? Are you saying Helen Keller or Beethoven weren't human? Stevie Wonder? An amputee? Being human isn't about what particular senses you can line up. If you think it is, we can't converse intelligently.
This is contradictory. Your body is the source of the stimulus received by your brain.
That does not mean that a simulation needs a body, however, or that intelligences without such stimulus are not human in any meaningful way. When I dream, I see things without the aid of my eyes. I hear things. I taste things, feel things, do things. That's because perception - all of it - is entirely brain function. We can create inputs for all the major senses, and it's not even a serious technical issue. So this point is moot in any case.
In short, even the successful simulation of a human brain would not yield a human-like intelligence, because the experiences of that intellect would be dramatically different.
Your premises are dreadfully flawed, and your conclusions no better. Your presumption that we can't feed sensory information is entirely wrong, as is your take that a complete, rock-standard human regime of input forms the basis for humanity; if a brain simulation can be done, input will not be a problem.
A disconnected AI with no essential linkage would not be a person from our perspective.
That's an ethically bankrupt outlook. That same outlook means a homeless person trapped in a mine unknown to anyone isn't a person either. If there is a conscious intelligence, regardless if it connects to us or not, that intelligence has value a a person. There is no other acceptable stance.
That'll come as a surprise to a couple friends who spend their weekends flying around just for fun.
No, truly, it won't. For them, point B is obviously in the sky, and they'd be the first to tell you so. And a flight simulator can't get them there.
...you'd have to simulate all of that crap, too, before you'd wind up with anything that you'd consider human
Well, a couple of senses - sight, hearing - are enough to allow humans to lead very meaningful, stable lives. We can easily provide sight, hearing, speech, even touch right now. Plus others that are not normally in our realm of perception. As for the systems of the brain, simulation isn't the problem, actually knowing how things work is the problem. I don't think it's a technology problem at all, it's a lack of data problem. But I agree, and have already said, that it seems like it'll be quite a while before that is resolved.
If you also simulated the whole person, and the effects of their environment (e.g. hunger) to give them urges and needs and wants -- then I suspect you might have a shot at simulating human intelligence.
All physical urges and sensory regimes are in the end brain functions. All of them. Hunger, itching, pain, pressure, hearing, etc. No need to simulate the body. At the most, you provide a specific stimulus to the system. Mental urges, those that are a consequence of cognitive function, will arise on their own.
just as much as my PC running Microsoft Flight Simulator X qualifies my computer as a Boeing 747.
No. The objective of an actual aircraft is to get you from point A to point B. Really get you there, not just simulate the action while measuring human inputs against a known set of parameters.
The objective of interacting with an actual human is to get intelligent answers, intelligent questions, intelligent speculation and so forth. This is also exactly what you would desire to get from a cybernetic system that implements a human intelligence. If the system functions and if you can get those answers just as you would get them from a human being, then you've actually achieved your objective, and it is the same objective you would have had were you conversing with a human being.
This is not even remotely comparable to running a flight simulator.
Therefore, if, as I specified in my post, you have achieved a running full human brain simulation, then yes, you have created something that is in fact as human as you are in terms of mental facilities. Not socially, not legally, but scientifically and factually speaking. My guess is those former two issues will be debated for years after any such event by the superstitious. But superstition can no more make a machine intelligence of this type inhuman than racial prejudice can make a black man inhuman.
So far, there are no indications whatsoever that there are processes in the human brain cannot be fully represented by simulation. Not even the slightest hint. And of course, there are many things that computer simulations can do that the human brain cannot, both in time and in complexity. My feeling is that yes, we're going to see machine intelligences, though I don't automatically presume they will be simulations of human brains; that was a condition the parent post to mine applied to the question, and that was why I answered just as I did. Personally, I think it'll be a while yet before we understand human brains well enough to simulate them. Consequently I expect that simpler intelligences will arise before human-copy intelligences do, and gain ground quickly as they are incrementally improved. Just an IMHO.
If we ever have a computer powerful enough to fully simulate a human brain, would, would the simulation qualify as human?
In reality, yes, of course. Legally and socially are other matters entirely.
Additional implied consequences include that given the ability to simulate a human brain in real time, the usual incremental hardware improvements will allow simulation in better than real time, leading naturally and directly to more-than-human performance. Likewise, lesser hardware could perform fully human reasoning in less than real time, which could put slow, but still intelligent, human reasoning and other attributes into play. This is entirely aside from the issue of improving the human model, which is also a very likely path of advancement given the initial achievement.
...Photoshop would be free-as-in-beer, they would still be non-free
You can get software that does a lot of what Photoshop does, and a lot that it doesn't, without paying and still be 100% above board and legal. Check out the WinImages page on (non)-piracy. Basically, you can copy the software if you have it, or get a copy from someone who has it, you just don't get support. You can't be a pirate if people won't agree to treat you as one.;-)
One word: Resolution. When one pixel might or might not represent a huge boulder, that's one thing. When it represents darker pigment on the tip of your left nipple, that's something else entirely.
Cessna@1000 or telephoto lens beats out any spy satellite.
Ever hear of adaptive optics? Multiple aperture arrays? Interferometry? The amount of money and technology available to the US government moves the bar right out of your reach.
Think of it this way: it's a civilian benefit from a military budget. How cool is that?
No, think of it this way: It's some person half a continent away looking into your yard despite your privacy fence, watching your significant other sunbathe, nude. Without a warrant, an invitation, or anything remotely resembling a good reason.
What this means is that in order to attempt to be secure from unreasonable search (again, see the 4th amendment) from individuals in the employ of an invasive and out of control government, fences are no longer going to be sufficient. Now we're going to have to roof our properties too.
Not to rain on your audiophile parade, but I'd just like to point out that you are pumping a 64-96kbps lossy stream into gear capable of accurately reproducing every compression artifact. Just thought you might want to know;-)
Oh, don't worry, I'm not feeling particularly rained on. I'm well aware of how they get all those channels into the allotted bandwidth and data space. You didn't quote my whole sentence there... CD's, remember. I use a CD jukebox and I have a lot of CDs. Still, nothing beats radio for finding out about music you had no idea existed, and I have plenty of use for background music too; I'm a busy guy. And no matter what, it's better than our local radio station. Trust me on that one.
hell i have friends who like the over compression of FM radio.
Just for the record - the FM radio modulation process, transmission process, and demodulation process do not compress. Compression today is applied as a pre-RF step to the audio itself, and then that audio is sent to the transmitter. There is no technical reason whatsoever you could not have a compression free FM broadcast.
The reason that FM stations today use compression is because some (idiot) somewhere decided that it was a "bad thing" to "not be as loud" as other stations.
FM can reproduce 20 Hz to 15 KHz with low noise and surprising dynamic range when the transmission and reception chains consist of high quality components and signals. Especially in mono, but stereo doesn't sacrifice too much.
None of this solves the problems that (a) there are very few FM stations on the air that actually use the medium with the idea of providing the listener with a high fidelity experience, and (b) there are very few FM stations on the air that offer programming that consists of much more than a severely restricted playlist. I miss the days of progressive rock stations like WNEW in New York; DJ's like Allison Steele and Chris Fornatelle (spelling could easily be wrong there) would dig into the station's library and pull out something you'd never even heard of and then tell you all about the people involved. At the same time, at the other end of the dial, there were classical format stations in or near NYC that were absolutely compression-free; you could count on them for excellent audio.
Personally, I play CDs or Sirius satellite radio into a reference Dolby FM transmitter (25 uS) and pipe it around the house using 75-ohm coaxial cable, then into various tuners from Marantz. I have a 2130, a model 10, a 2120, and a couple of receivers, a 2325 and a 2285B. I can't hear much above 15 KHz any longer anyway; I'm 51, a rock musician, and the ears are definitely going. Not that most recordings provide much audio above 15 KHz, especially in the rock genre.
Otherwise, I'd have one FM station to listen to which plays a horrifying mix of country and pop, compresses the living daylights out of all of it, and intersperses the musical content with the farm report, insanely badly produced local commercials, and (mostly incorrect) weather predictions. The station is automation based, and commercials cut off the news announcers in mid-word, music cuts off commercials, and so on in every combination you can imagine. If there's a worse way to run a radio station, I'm afraid my imagination fails me. In this part of the country, you learn to be very grateful for Sirius and XM, believe me.
Slashdot Mirror
You never know how damaging wrong info will be to someone, do you? Vandalism is vandalism. That's my point.
You're a legend in your own mind, no question about it. But you're still 100% wrong. You can't eliminate a basic problem by abstracting parts of it. When (ok, if) you learn that, you'll make better arguments. As for the "jerk" comment, right-o. A legend in your own mind, indeed.
If these stations insist that such experiments are ok, perhaps someone should suggest to them that hammering a spike through the transmission line of their tower might be just as reasonable. You know, just to check their reaction time. After all, after the fuses and output devices are replaced, it'll be as good as new, eh? :-/
To quote someone else, if atheism is a belief system, then bald is a hair color. I hold no beliefs in a god or gods; I am not a theist.
Agnosticism is not a third or middle position, it is simply a red herring. Either you hold beliefs in a god or gods, or you do not. I do not. That makes me an atheist. It's just that simple.
I'll note that atheism has nothing to do with any such thing; there were dedicated and patriotic communist Christians and Muslims, and also dedicated patriotic atheist Americans at that time, and there still are. Atheism carries no political stance. It simply indicates a lack of belief in a god or gods. In no case does atheism lead one to communism. Atheism deals with the supernatural. Not the political. When you try to say that atheism "is" communism or that communism "is" atheism, you're conflating two separate issues that have no tie to one another other than they may be found among people. For instance, I consider myself an American patriot; a constant and vocal supporter of the constitution, an advocate for freedom of religion, and a horrified bystander as our government rushes further and further from the ideals it was legitimately constituted to serve. These are stances that have nothing really to do with the fact that no event or experience in my life has created, fostered or imbued a belief in a god or gods, and that my own philosophy, which is entirely based upon levels of confidence, is superior to any belief-based philosophy. The next atheist you encounter will no doubt vary from these stances, most likely by a great deal. This is because atheism isn't political. It's about god, or gods, and nothing else.
I wrote that government forcing religion on people as being inherently bad. Mind you, the poster I replied to was being both illogical and irrational, not to mention presumptuous and not very bright; but I don't tar all theists with the brush that painted that poster. I carry plenty of emotional loading, and I'm not in the least ashamed of it or inclined to pretend it isn't there. When someone acts like a fool, I'm pretty likely to treat them like a fool. Likewise, when the government is abusive, it makes me upset. This is rational, reasonable and quite human. Finally, respect is earned; it isn't given. Or at least, certainly not by me.
Atheism is lack of belief in a god or gods. The etymology is "a" (without) "theism" (belief in a god or gods.) It is not a a "belief system", any more than lack of belief in Santa Claus is. Which is to say, not at all.
I have no such desire. I desire to have religious symbols removed from government operations, not "public life." You want to put up a cross or a giant voodoo doll? Fine. Put it on your lawn; put it on your place of worship, face it to the street and have at it. What I don't want is government showing any favor whatsoever to any particular religion. As an example of the tensions this causes, imagine a Jew or a Muslim being asked to swear on the Christian bible in a US court. Imagine a patriotic atheist being asked to swear to god - to outright lie - to qualify for a military or political position. There is every reason to separate religion from government. That is not the same as separating it from the public, nor do I advocate any such thing.
The intent of the authors of the constitution is precisely known from the other papers they left as a legacy; that is why the concept of an absolute wall between church and state was established. It isn't there to put religion down; it is there to protect all practitioners of all religions equally. As soon as the government begins to favor people of one religion (as it has, that religion is Christianity) then it begins to marginalize and disadvantage people of other religions. This is best avoided. If you had any idea of how the constitution was crafted, you would have known this.
I hold no belief in a god or gods. This is not a belief system. There's no system involved. If I ever encounter any evidence at all for a god or gods, I'll take another look. Until then, I have no more reason to believe in one of these religions claims than I do in the claims for the Easter Bunny. This position is better for me. It may very well not be better for you, and I do not claim that it is. However, the government not pushing religion on people is better for everyone, and that includes you and me.
I'm not in the least interested in "enforcing" anything on any citizen. I'm just interested in seeing to it that the government doesn't either. Got it now? Or are these concepts too difficult for you?
So, you think computers exist in a fairytale fantasy? Mines are real, but computers are ethereal phantasms cooked up by the superstitious? Programs aren't switching real states in real machinery? It's all [waves hands vaguely] imaginary?
Look; a thinking mind is a thinking mind. In that sense, it makes no difference if it is established in a human, a computer, or another venue we haven't thought up yet, or if we discover it in another species. Either you respect intelligence or you don't. I do. So I'm never going to agree with your idea that lack of communications magically imbues an intelligence with irrelevance.
No... but somewhere, a computer just set the flag for "irrational behavior" in your file to True. So if they need to come to get you for any reason, they'll probably come with guns drawn. Good job. You really showed them something, didn't you?
I have extremely high confidence that evolution (and Evolution) is an accurate representation of some of the actual processes that got life where it is today, and I still can't justify animal testing. I think it is cowardly and reveals nothing less than a playground bully mentality. Forcing creatures who cannot defend themselves to take risks on our behalf... it's disgusting.
More to the point, should we remove the FDA? Aside from their vicious stance on animal testing, they deny drugs certified safe for humans and shown to be efficacious to dying patients. I doubt the agency can be fixed, either. Better to start over.
Test on volunteers. Record the results in a standardized, useful fashion and make them available to everyone. If volunteers can't be found, don't test. If you want to take a drug, take it. When you do, be willing to be surveyed as to your experience with the drug. Be aware that not all drugs work the same on all subjects. Sometimes that means really bad things. That's life. Keep lawyers out of it. And mostly out of everything else, too.
Nice. :-)
Come on mods, pay attention. The above line alone should have got the parent post modded to +5 insightful by the very first five moderators that read it. You ARE reading the posts, aren't you?
Stuffing... do you mean like forcing everyone else to pay the share of various taxes that churches should pay? Or do you mean like putting religious slogans on money? Or do you mean like putting religious slogans into the national oath, and the pledge of allegiance? Or do you mean by making laws about what you can and cannot do on Sundays? Are you referring to that whole "put your hand on the bible" thing in court? Perhaps you're talking about how atheist and non-Christian soldiers are treated in the military? Or do you mean how the government tries to control religious leaders who get up into the pulpit and speak according to their beliefs against or for a particular candidate? Or are you talking about the recent CBS news affiliate story where it is shown that the government has been going to various religious leaders and telling them to encourage the citizens to give up their weapons in a time of martial law? Is it the presidential speeches that end with a distinctly presumptuous "God bless America"? Or the congressional sessions that are infected with prayer?
Personally, I've been feeling like government has been shoving religion down my throat since I was in first grade public school. But hey — that's just me.
No. Rural Montana.
Really? If we surgically lift your brain from your body and connect it to artificial sensory inputs and then ask if you are human, you are saying you would answer "no"? If so, what are you at that point? And of course, after having done that, if we ask your now brainless body (presumably on life support as well) a question, what answer do you expect it to give?
If we amputate your leg, are you now not human? Both legs? Both legs and your arms? Cut you off at the neck? Poke out your eyes? remove your eardrums? When do you think that loss of biological function (or perhaps being born without it as in congenital defects) crosses the line into not being human?
I take the view that none of that makes any difference. At all. You're human because you can think and because the general ability to think that you possess is vaguely similar to the ability that the rest of us possess. No more, no less. Being human casts a wide net. Babies are human. Paraplegics are human. Even Hitler, Stalin, Bush and McCarthy qualify as fully human. And should a computer be able to think like we do, then it is just as human as we are.
You said that "any computer intelligence must be capable of interacting with the real world before it can be considered a real person."
I say, that is ethically bankrupt because it is a statement with no meaningful difference from "any intelligence must be capable of interacting with the real world before it can be considered a real person."
You don't have anywhere to go; you dug the hole yourself.
No. In real life, it is a thing of being in a different place. Hovering in a helicopter, you're at one G, no movement. The point is you're in the sky, not on the ground. With a simulator, you're on the ground. And by the way, a good flight simulator can give you a very good set of motions that will give you the stimulation you're talking about, but it still doesn't give you what flying does, because you go nowhere. Flying is transport. Simulation of flying is not. That's why your friends prefer to fly.
Listen to yourself. Are you saying a paraplegic isn't human? Are you saying Helen Keller or Beethoven weren't human? Stevie Wonder? An amputee? Being human isn't about what particular senses you can line up. If you think it is, we can't converse intelligently.
That does not mean that a simulation needs a body, however, or that intelligences without such stimulus are not human in any meaningful way. When I dream, I see things without the aid of my eyes. I hear things. I taste things, feel things, do things. That's because perception - all of it - is entirely brain function. We can create inputs for all the major senses, and it's not even a serious technical issue. So this point is moot in any case.
Your premises are dreadfully flawed, and your conclusions no better. Your presumption that we can't feed sensory information is entirely wrong, as is your take that a complete, rock-standard human regime of input forms the basis for humanity; if a brain simulation can be done, input will not be a problem.
That's an ethically bankrupt outlook. That same outlook means a homeless person trapped in a mine unknown to anyone isn't a person either. If there is a conscious intelligence, regardless if it connects to us or not, that intelligence has value a a person. There is no other acceptable stance.
No, truly, it won't. For them, point B is obviously in the sky, and they'd be the first to tell you so. And a flight simulator can't get them there.
Well, a couple of senses - sight, hearing - are enough to allow humans to lead very meaningful, stable lives. We can easily provide sight, hearing, speech, even touch right now. Plus others that are not normally in our realm of perception. As for the systems of the brain, simulation isn't the problem, actually knowing how things work is the problem. I don't think it's a technology problem at all, it's a lack of data problem. But I agree, and have already said, that it seems like it'll be quite a while before that is resolved.
All physical urges and sensory regimes are in the end brain functions. All of them. Hunger, itching, pain, pressure, hearing, etc. No need to simulate the body. At the most, you provide a specific stimulus to the system. Mental urges, those that are a consequence of cognitive function, will arise on their own.
No. The objective of an actual aircraft is to get you from point A to point B. Really get you there, not just simulate the action while measuring human inputs against a known set of parameters.
The objective of interacting with an actual human is to get intelligent answers, intelligent questions, intelligent speculation and so forth. This is also exactly what you would desire to get from a cybernetic system that implements a human intelligence. If the system functions and if you can get those answers just as you would get them from a human being, then you've actually achieved your objective, and it is the same objective you would have had were you conversing with a human being.
This is not even remotely comparable to running a flight simulator.
Therefore, if, as I specified in my post, you have achieved a running full human brain simulation, then yes, you have created something that is in fact as human as you are in terms of mental facilities. Not socially, not legally, but scientifically and factually speaking. My guess is those former two issues will be debated for years after any such event by the superstitious. But superstition can no more make a machine intelligence of this type inhuman than racial prejudice can make a black man inhuman.
So far, there are no indications whatsoever that there are processes in the human brain cannot be fully represented by simulation. Not even the slightest hint. And of course, there are many things that computer simulations can do that the human brain cannot, both in time and in complexity. My feeling is that yes, we're going to see machine intelligences, though I don't automatically presume they will be simulations of human brains; that was a condition the parent post to mine applied to the question, and that was why I answered just as I did. Personally, I think it'll be a while yet before we understand human brains well enough to simulate them. Consequently I expect that simpler intelligences will arise before human-copy intelligences do, and gain ground quickly as they are incrementally improved. Just an IMHO.
In reality, yes, of course. Legally and socially are other matters entirely.
Additional implied consequences include that given the ability to simulate a human brain in real time, the usual incremental hardware improvements will allow simulation in better than real time, leading naturally and directly to more-than-human performance. Likewise, lesser hardware could perform fully human reasoning in less than real time, which could put slow, but still intelligent, human reasoning and other attributes into play. This is entirely aside from the issue of improving the human model, which is also a very likely path of advancement given the initial achievement.
You can get software that does a lot of what Photoshop does, and a lot that it doesn't, without paying and still be 100% above board and legal. Check out the WinImages page on (non)-piracy. Basically, you can copy the software if you have it, or get a copy from someone who has it, you just don't get support. You can't be a pirate if people won't agree to treat you as one. ;-)
One word: Resolution. When one pixel might or might not represent a huge boulder, that's one thing. When it represents darker pigment on the tip of your left nipple, that's something else entirely.
Ever hear of adaptive optics? Multiple aperture arrays? Interferometry? The amount of money and technology available to the US government moves the bar right out of your reach.
No, think of it this way: It's some person half a continent away looking into your yard despite your privacy fence, watching your significant other sunbathe, nude. Without a warrant, an invitation, or anything remotely resembling a good reason.
What this means is that in order to attempt to be secure from unreasonable search (again, see the 4th amendment) from individuals in the employ of an invasive and out of control government, fences are no longer going to be sufficient. Now we're going to have to roof our properties too.
Oh, don't worry, I'm not feeling particularly rained on. I'm well aware of how they get all those channels into the allotted bandwidth and data space. You didn't quote my whole sentence there... CD's, remember. I use a CD jukebox and I have a lot of CDs. Still, nothing beats radio for finding out about music you had no idea existed, and I have plenty of use for background music too; I'm a busy guy. And no matter what, it's better than our local radio station. Trust me on that one.
Just for the record - the FM radio modulation process, transmission process, and demodulation process do not compress. Compression today is applied as a pre-RF step to the audio itself, and then that audio is sent to the transmitter. There is no technical reason whatsoever you could not have a compression free FM broadcast.
The reason that FM stations today use compression is because some (idiot) somewhere decided that it was a "bad thing" to "not be as loud" as other stations.
FM can reproduce 20 Hz to 15 KHz with low noise and surprising dynamic range when the transmission and reception chains consist of high quality components and signals. Especially in mono, but stereo doesn't sacrifice too much.
None of this solves the problems that (a) there are very few FM stations on the air that actually use the medium with the idea of providing the listener with a high fidelity experience, and (b) there are very few FM stations on the air that offer programming that consists of much more than a severely restricted playlist. I miss the days of progressive rock stations like WNEW in New York; DJ's like Allison Steele and Chris Fornatelle (spelling could easily be wrong there) would dig into the station's library and pull out something you'd never even heard of and then tell you all about the people involved. At the same time, at the other end of the dial, there were classical format stations in or near NYC that were absolutely compression-free; you could count on them for excellent audio.
Personally, I play CDs or Sirius satellite radio into a reference Dolby FM transmitter (25 uS) and pipe it around the house using 75-ohm coaxial cable, then into various tuners from Marantz. I have a 2130, a model 10, a 2120, and a couple of receivers, a 2325 and a 2285B. I can't hear much above 15 KHz any longer anyway; I'm 51, a rock musician, and the ears are definitely going. Not that most recordings provide much audio above 15 KHz, especially in the rock genre.
Otherwise, I'd have one FM station to listen to which plays a horrifying mix of country and pop, compresses the living daylights out of all of it, and intersperses the musical content with the farm report, insanely badly produced local commercials, and (mostly incorrect) weather predictions. The station is automation based, and commercials cut off the news announcers in mid-word, music cuts off commercials, and so on in every combination you can imagine. If there's a worse way to run a radio station, I'm afraid my imagination fails me. In this part of the country, you learn to be very grateful for Sirius and XM, believe me.
Outrun a shark? At 2 kph for 300 feet?
Methinks you aren't very familiar with sharks. A blue shark for instance is good for about 39 kph. In other words, if it wants you, you'll be had.
Mmmph. I dunno. This thing seems like an invitation for a shark to presume you are a nice, big fish.
Not to sound paranoid or anything, but I guess I'll let other people use them for a while first. ;-)