The Sydney Meetup was certainly a success as far as I'm concerned. I intend to be there again next month.
I think that we could improve on the whole "who is a slashdotter in this pub" though. Maybe a theme (i.e. wear a particular colour (maybe not black;-))) or we could meet up in a slightly less busy pub (the palisade hotel just down the road from the Lord Nelson springs to mind).
I concur, this has been my experience of most of the students who were in Comp. Sci. lectures with me at Uni. I think a lot of them chose to do comp. sci. just because they had the marks to do it and they heard that it paid well. I guess this is the same phenomenon which leads to a glut of medicine and law students.
Personally (and this may be because of the way that I've learn't stuff about computers), I think that an ability to think and learn for yourself is much more useful than any particular knowledge you may have gained in a degree or course. This is particularily so with the rapid pace at which computer technology is advancing and the availability of information about new technologies on the web.
As someone who was down at the South Pole base and McMurdo, I have to say that this book is really very good in its description of culture and environment down there. I was really surprised at just how well it represented these aspects.
If you'd like to see what it is like at the southpole at the moment, follow the AASTO cam link from my homepage http://danielmarlay.homepage.com
Douglas Hofstader argued that for a computer to be able to pass the turing test, it would need to have such a detailed understanding of the world in which the language is based that it would in fact be intelligent.
The turing test is based on the way that we as humans ascertain whether another object is sentient or not. We only think that other people are sentient and intelligent because of the way they act. We don't actually know that anyone else is actually conscious, we just assume it from their actions. The turing test attempts to use the same procedure, but hide those aspects that might prejudice our impressions, i.e. that one of the respondants is actually a computer. The turing test is overly restrictive in that a computer has to try to act like a human, however it was presented as a starting point, i.e. if a computer could pass the turing test, then it should be conscious. Oh, and how do you know that rabbits and dogs don't do symbolic information processing. Symbolic information needn't be just a representation of words. I would highly recommend "Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" by Douglas Hofstader for a much more in depth discussion
Slashdot Mirror
The Sydney Meetup was certainly a success as far as I'm concerned. I intend to be there again next month.
I think that we could improve on the whole "who is a slashdotter in this pub" though. Maybe a theme (i.e. wear a particular colour (maybe not black ;-))) or we could meet up in a slightly less busy pub (the palisade hotel just down the road from the Lord Nelson springs to mind).
I concur,
this has been my experience of most of the students who were in Comp. Sci. lectures with me at Uni. I think a lot of them chose to do comp. sci. just because they had the marks to do it and they heard that it paid well. I guess this is the same phenomenon which leads to a glut of medicine and law students.
Personally (and this may be because of the way that I've learn't stuff about computers), I think that an ability to think and learn for yourself is much more useful than any particular knowledge you may have gained in a degree or course. This is particularily so with the rapid pace at which computer technology is advancing and the availability of information about new technologies on the web.
So keep thinking, its the best asset you have
As someone who was down at the South Pole base and McMurdo, I have to say that this book is really very good in its description of culture and environment down there. I was really surprised at just how well it represented these aspects.
If you'd like to see what it is like at the southpole at the moment, follow the AASTO cam link from my homepage http://danielmarlay.homepage.com
Douglas Hofstader argued that for a computer to be able to pass the turing test, it would need to have such a detailed understanding of the world in which the language is based that it would in fact be intelligent.
The turing test is based on the way that we as humans ascertain whether another object is sentient or not. We only think that other people are sentient and intelligent because of the way they act. We don't actually know that anyone else is actually conscious, we just assume it from their actions. The turing test attempts to use the same procedure, but hide those aspects that might prejudice our impressions, i.e. that one of the respondants is actually a computer. The turing test is overly restrictive in that a computer has to try to act like a human, however it was presented as a starting point, i.e. if a computer could pass the turing test, then it should be conscious. Oh, and how do you know that rabbits and dogs don't do symbolic information processing. Symbolic information needn't be just a representation of words. I would highly recommend "Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" by Douglas Hofstader for a much more in depth discussion