Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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in what sense is the modern Christian God a "personal God" when the persons have to be supplied a script to explain their relationship to that god?
I am more interested in what you guys think than what you quote from others...
give us a break here, in your own words please...
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Werner and Largo,
I have my doubts about building a human brain. It is going to be a very expensive proposition. However I can certainly see advances in computing, where the computer might as well be human. Think HAL 9000. That is quite possible and probably inevitable. The problem arises when you take trillions of neurons with multiple connections and put it into a 4 pound organ that uses only 1000 calories per day. To attempt the same with any sort of conventional computing would take a huge building, even with possible newer technologies, and it would eat the power of a small city.
It is much easier to take an existing organism and change it into whatever you like.
What nobody is discussing, and what I think is the far more likely path, is to use the human being and build from there.
Genetic engineering is no longer science fiction. People who study the affects of medicines regularly genetically engineer mice. I know of one study that was published in the PNAS, and they made mice without any hystamine receptors. Apparently it isn't very difficult.
Monsanto has already created BT Corn, where you take a bacterial toxin, such as that found in the organic pesticide Bacillus Thuringiensis, and splice it into Corn DNA. This kills any larvae that happen to hatch on the corn. BT has long been seen as a "clean" pesticide, because A) it is natural, and B) it is non-toxic to humans. BT works by getting in to the gut of an insect and starving it. One of the problems is that insects, as do many pathogens, rapidly develop immunity to these toxins, just as some infectious diseases are immune to even the newest antibiotic.
That is evolution in action. It is easy to see adaptation and evolution in those species with short generations, such as bacteria, or with a huge population, such as insects. Evolution can be SEEN IN ACTION.
That is pretty wild, splicing a bacterial gene into a plant. Some plant genes have been spliced into animals as well. BTW, many plants have a lot more chromosomes than humans, implicating that a plant might have a more complicated genome than humans. So maybe we aren't all that special from a genetics point of view.
This is just the start. Now there are herbicidal genes that have also been spliced into our grain diet.
As I said, mice are already being tweaked like this daily. I've also heard of splicing the flourescence of sealife into animals as a way to follow where drugs go in the system. There are already animal assays that show where many psychoactive drugs go.
Since this technology is widespread, to assume that it won't be done with humans is regretably childish.
So I don't see the need to build consciousness when we are so close to simply improving the hardware that we already have. It is just a matter of finding the right gene and then splicing it into the embryo.
Wiki has a page on this that may or may not scare the snot out of you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_organism
So does an person have a soul if they are modified? I can certainly see the day when human embryos are screened for such things as Parkinson's, Alzheimers, and Downs Syndrome.
The film Gattica covers a possible use of this in the future. Take the genes of the parents, take out "bad" like baldness, and take out inheritable diseases or other undesirable traits as a start.
Then take all of the favorable traits to have children who are super intelligent, healthy and strong, and hopefull not include any genetic predisposition to violence. This type of technology is already out of the bag, although not all genes are understood.
This is here already. There is a pig that digests food better, hence grows faster, and is now in use. Pigs are also being worked on to grow organs that can be transplanted into humans without rejection. On the one hand, no more waiting on a transplant organ. On the other hand, you could probably grow a genetic twin and use it as you grow old.
To assume that it is not already being done on humans is not known. Certainly it can help by ending certain inheritable diseases, and it is rife with abuse. I can only assume that the militaries of the world aren't studying this, and the technology is so 80's, that even small countries can do it.
Americans being Americans, we will probably lead the way.
This is full of ethical dilemas. Just let you mind consider the possibilities for use and abuse. Perhaps it will be so widely accepted that it isn't thought twice about.
So you don't need to build a computer with consciousness. You can create an organism that does whatever you want out of existing biology.
Scary, huh?
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Dr. F.
Ice climber
SoCal
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 8, 2012 - 05:54pm PT
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You are telling the world that all scientists do not believe the Bible. Wrong
There are many scientists that are Christians, and NO one is saying that they are not allowed to have their faith or opinions on the matter
But no scientist has been able to prove that most of what is said in the Bible as factual in any way, it's just stories and colorful rhetoric, and in no way is it possible that it's the word of God, that is a given, because God has never spoken to anyone so they could write his word down.
BECAUSE!!
If they did it then, we could do it now!!, Right?
But everything in the bible was going on 2050 years ago, when people hear stories and myths, and think they were true, because no one checked them out to be true at the time that it was Actually going on.
You can say or think anything you want, scientifically speaking, it is not the word of God. Fact
To post Bible quotes (cut and paste):
here is the problem. I never read them, they are like a spooge that you don't want to touch,
I just want to say "get it away from me, please, it's unreadable gobbyly goop"
Christians seem to be the farthest Off the True Human Path that is going forward
jus speculatin
DrF
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Dr. F.
Ice climber
SoCal
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 8, 2012 - 05:55pm PT
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That will be the last time I use the lame ass BB sign off
I promise you
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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edit:
A snippet from wiki:
Scientists have genetically engineered several organisms, including some mammals, to include green fluorescent protein (GFP) for medical research purposes (Chalfie, Shimoura, and Tsien were awarded the Nobel prize in 2008 for GFP[32]). For example fluorescent pigs have been bred in the US in 2000[33], in Korea in 2002[34], in Taiwan in 2006[35], in China in 2008[36] and Japan in 2009[37]. These pigs were bred to study human organ transplants,[36] regenerating ocular photoreceptor cells,[38], neuronal cells in the brain[38], regenerative medicine via stem cells[39], tissue engineering[37], and other diseases. In 2011 a Japanese-American Team created green-fluorescent cats in order to find therapies for HIV/AIDS and other diseases[40] as Feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) is related to HIV
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WBraun
climber
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Genetic engineering is just manipulating the material elements/energy.
The individual living entity's soul can never be manipulated by any material means.
Only Administrator (God) rights are attributed to the individual living entity's soul.
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WBraun
climber
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As our scientific knowledge expands, less is required of God/gods
That's material scientific proselytizing.
The entire material cosmic creation is none other than Gods inferior energy.
Thus nothing can even act without him acting first.
Thus God is impossible to eliminate from your equation since he's the source of the equation itself.
Equal, equipoise, balance, equilibrium etc etc.
Still .... there is also the superior energy and that can not be reached by the inferior method process of induction and deduction.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Werner,
It is easy to say that God is required for the Universe to run because those are your beliefs.
If you were born in North Korea, you, and probably all of us, would believe something totally different.
That's why I am 99.9999999999% certain that Go-Bee would be a muslim if he had been born and lived in Saudi Arabia.
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WBraun
climber
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because those are your beliefs.
No those are facts not beliefs.
Beliefs change.
If you were born in North Korea, you, and probably all of us, would believe something totally different.
Understanding God has nothing to do with where one is born .......
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go-B
climber
2 Timothy 1:9-10 Psalm 119:83
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in what sense is the modern Christian God a "personal God" when the persons have to be supplied a script to explain their relationship to that god?
Each of has different gifts and there are no two of us exactly alike! And when our bodies are working the way they should we have the five senses that allow us to interact to the world around us! We are self contained able to run, jump, and climb! Think and grow in knowledge! Love and be loved! Understand right and wrong! Feel compassion and thankfulness! Be able to comprehend God as something more than just the things our senses can know, that God is greater than the whole, He is our maker! For me, He is my personal God, that sent His Son Jesus to forgive me my sins, He is my God! I have my life to be Grateful for!
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MikeL
climber
SANTA CLARA, CA
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I don't know if they've experienced things that I haven't that have led them to different beliefs.
Fet: why does it matter to you?
Maybe I read this wrong, but are you saying that it's important that others think like you or vice versa?
Is this also Ed's reason for demanding proof that others are conscious or have the same kind of consciousness as he does?
Honestly, I don't get it.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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I'm not demanding, but rather am interested in the answer. My insisting is because I think it is a major point in this discussion. You and Largo have made "experience" a prime issue, that is something we know individually. But we have a sense that others also experience things much as we do, and we generalize that... but how do we get to the point that we understand that others are conscious as we are and that they have experiences much as we do?
I think that avoiding that discussion is a major deficiency in your point of view of "first person" über alles. Unless we are the sole creator of the universe, which is the solipsistic criticism.
We naturally generalize our understanding of our own consciousness to others, we have a "theory of mind" which we apply.
My question to you and Largo is, how do we come by this theory?
You can see it is a central issue in the Turing Test, which aside from what entity is being tested, is about that possibility that one can determine anything at all about the conscious state of either machine or person.
If that is the defective assumption upon which Largo dismisses the Turing Test, that is, we can never know if something else is conscious, then it is an important part of his point of view. But he hasn't said this as far as I understand what he has written.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Implicit in the Turing Test is also the presumption that humans can tell if something else is human.
I need a few hours to break down the flaws in the Turing test, and right now I don't have them. But maybe soon. For now, one of the flaws or misrepresentations is that the thing that identifies and distinguishes a human from a rock or an anteater is the nature of our subjective experience. When we try and objectify human output, such as symbolic representation of our experience (thoughts, feelings, memories) in the form or words, then artificially replicate said words by a computer, then have said computer "type" its programmed drift onto a computer screen viewed by a human, the "product" is hardly human because it is not the fruit of subjective experience. The so-called "shallow view" will latch onto this as proof that an objectified version of subjectivity is equal to the human article (map IS the territory) and because both can be replicated, and are indistinguishable from human or machine, there is no difference between human and machine, or at any rate, there is nothing theoretically impossible from us replicating subjectivity mechanically. After all, who can prove there is any difference? If so, what and where is the proof?
Now Ed is fascinated by the fact that we can't prove or "know" that another person has experience, and is sentient. Of course we all know that to Ed, to "know" is to quantify, since he has no experience of any other type of knowing, and has therefore limited his definition of knowing to numerical representation, and the inferences from said measurements. This means if we were able to know that Ed or Marlow is conscious, we'd have to point to some specific "thing" or phenomenon that would indicate the existence of a strictly human consciousness. That fact that we cannot does not at all mean that subjectivity and consciousness don't exist as experiential facts, it means what the Zen folks have been saying for 2,500 years - that our own and everyone else's "mind" is ungraspable (unquantifiable). To a strict materialist, this is proof that "mind" does not exist, but that the "real" stuff is the matter believed to "create" mind. This "shallow view" has to disadvantage of disavowing our fundamental reality - namely our subjective reality, which we cannot prove exsits inside of us or inside of others.
JL
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Oct 8, 2012 - 03:51pm PT
My Reality.
My reality is willy-nilly.
Having resonance with my creator.
I am in tune with the waves of control.
Feeling the rock is solid as my tooth.
My body is contoured to be a sacrifice for gain.
My mind is a flutter with the prescribed pain.
My spirit rockets on the hopes of the proposal of fame.
But my ambitions could be quenched by the verdict of shame.
Whilst my heart is playing another game.
My soul warns me that we are all the same.
I give thanks to the Lord, on a job well done.
And ask for strength, to keep hang'in on.
As he wraps his arms, around me and sez
I Love U Son
Jus Ryhm'in
BB
Edit
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Now Ed is fascinated by the fact that we can't prove or "know" that another person has experience, and is sentient. Of course we all know that to Ed, to "know" is to quantify, since he has no experience of any other type of knowing, and has therefore limited his definition of knowing to numerical representation, and the inferences from said measurements. This means if we were able to know that Ed or Marlow is conscious, we'd have to point to some specific "thing" or phenomenon that would indicate the existence of a strictly human consciousness. That fact that we cannot does not at all mean that subjectivity and consciousness don't exist as experiential facts, it means what the Zen folks have been saying for 2,500 years - that our own and everyone else's "mind" is ungraspable (unquantifiable).
not what I said... and while the zen folk have been saying that for 2500 years, they too have a "theory of mind" which they are referring to.
I wasn't asking for quantitative stuff, I was asking for your experiential stuff... how do you know I have consciousness?
I don't assume that you have a quantitative measure of it, but you do have a an idea about it.... how do you come by that idea?
Or are you saying you don't have any idea?
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slayton
Trad climber
Here and There
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So Braun again addresses us with his wisdom after this: This gives us a world where the scientific method works
Yes
But is only good for dressing the material body.
Since we are not the body the modern scientific method entirely misses the boat and is securely anchored to the shore of the junk associated with the self.
The self itself is completely neglected and only it's coat is dealt with which assumed thru material sciences defective theory and system.
To this I would reply with this. Again. I never received a response from this and though Norton brought it up again it doesn't make the question any less valid. .. ..
So Braun, what to you is the "Absolute Truth"? You bitch and moan to others for being "stupid", this or that, but all I see you saying is a bullsh#t, ephemeral response. For years.
For so long you have talked down upon so many.
Reveal yourself as the spiritual authority you make a claim to if by only by shitting on the words and thoughts of others.
By your words here over so long a time you seem to know the answer. What is it that you believe or know that we "stupid" f*#kers are missing?
You never answered that question or those questions. Really, I've been here on SuperTopo for years, have been climbing for years and respect what you've done for the community. Beyond all that, what you have said about spirituality, other's beliefs, and your own dismissal of of other's beliefs, followed by your own assertions of a vague reality that maybe you hope others understand? Why else bother to write anything if not in the hope that others might understand.
Maybe you write in the method you do to elicit thought. Maybe. Or maybe you're just a another who thinks he knows the answers and only spits out blurbs when it fits, never acting to talk about our back up those thoughts when challenged.
Sean
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WBraun
climber
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Short paper by Goutam Paul from Department of Computer Science
State University of New York at Albany
Goutam Paul does a nice job explaining consciousness along with a part on the "Turing Test".
Here's the link to the full paper and a excerpt from it below:
http://www.cs.albany.edu/~goutam/AIConscCamera.pdf
Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness
Superiority of Consciousness
The fact that intelligence is higher than the mind and it is associated with rationality does not
guarantee that decisions taken by the intelligence are always right.
Just like in Logic, even if every step in the argument is perfect, if the initial assumptions or
axioms happen to be wrong, then all the conclusions would be wrong.
As an example, suppose we have a perfect computer program, but the input to this program is wrong
(say, not in the format that the program assumes its input to be).
Then even if every step of execution of the program is perfect, the output will be wrong.
Since axioms are taken for granted and cannot be proven by rationality or intelligence, the only
way to choose between right and wrong sets of axioms is by applying proper consciousness.
In all fields of science, this is how the axioms originate – they emerge from the core of human
consciousness, and then by applying intelligence upon those axioms human beings develop the
subsequent theory or justify observational results.
We can also understand the different levels of subtlety of body, mind, intelligence, and
consciousness by the way we feel satisfaction about each of these entities.
For example, sexual activity may satisfy one’s body (and perhaps partially satisfy one’s mind too, as the mind is just the next level above the body and is thus in direct touch with the body).
But it does not satisfy the intelligence, what to speak of satisfying the consciousness.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Werner, you are focusing on showing the "impossibility" of creating "consciousness" but that is not my current question, rather, I ask you too how you know someone else is conscious? or do you?
Whether or not it is impossible to create "artificial consciousness" depends on the answer to that question. Actually, whether or not there is such a thing as "consciousness" depends on the answer.
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MH2
climber
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Goutam seems to be saying that there is inherent imperfection in this world and then jumping to the conclusion that consciousness must therefore be exceptional. His analogy of the chariot is much like the old idea that there is a little person inside our heads doing our thinking and experiencing, which just kicks the question of what is going on to a level we haven't yet reached.
Another approach to whether other people have consciousness like our own:
We seem to be built the same way. If we have the same anatomy, wouldn't we work in very similar ways? If you took apart a car and it had the same parts as another car, couldn't you conclude that they operated in similar fashion?
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WBraun
climber
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Read the whole paper Ed.
Try not to focus only on the Artificial Intelligence part.
That wasn't the real reason I presented this paper here.
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