Re: virus: kurzweil cuts the mustard

sodom (Sodom@ma.ultranet.com)
Thu, 31 Dec 1998 16:13:59 -0500


haha - like your last line.

I dont believe that programming alone is the issue. So far it looks like
we start with only the "OS", the rest is gained through experience. Two
machine neural networks that started with the same programming, would, I
think, become more and more different as their store of experience
changed and grew seperate.

im just curious why my second paragraph was beyond answering. it is not
inconceivable that I am an avatar, or a machine. Perhaps I watch too much
scifi- but I just look at AI as the obvious future of technology. A
thinking machine - or clone - or cybernetics, just seem like budding
sciences and a fact of every day life.

Bill Roh

Robin Faichney wrote:

> In message <368AAFC6.21605221@ma.ultranet.com>, sodom
> <Sodom@ma.ultranet.com> writes
> >For all I know you could be Prof Tim in disguise, or a sophisticated
> >program. I choose to think of you as my equal because you display
> unique
> >perspective to me (as every conscious entity I met has).
>
> So two machines, identically programmed, would not be
> conscious because their perspectives were not unique?
>
> >Right now you think of
> >me as most likley as Human. And in your experience humans are
> conscious. If you
> >were to find out now that I were a machine, I am willing to bet that
> instead of
> >granting me consciousness, you would change your mind about me and I
> would be
> >less than conscious all of a sudden.
>
> That's so speculative as to be meaningless.
>
> >You cant even consider the notion that a
> >conscious machine can exist
>
> On the contrary -- I believe "conscious machine" is actually
> quite a good description of a person.
>
> > yet you believe in a God and the Spiritual nature
> >of humankind
>
> I don't believe in any God, and I don't know what "the
> Spiritual nature of humankind" means. But I do enjoy
> teasing woolly thinkers.
> --
> Robin