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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Oct 23, 2017 - 09:06am PT
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re: anti-natalism
"For sentient beings and for us humans especially, is life bad? According to South African philosopher, David Benatar, the answer is a resounding "Yes." Life is bad... so bad that it would be better if all sentient beings ceased with reproduction and went extinct after the current generation dies out." book reviewer
So perhaps this anti-natalism, as elucidated here by Benatar, explains the Fermi Paradox?
At least some of it?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox
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The scope and magnitude of obstacles in our future is truly mind-boggling.
My prediction: We are NOT going to "float" the future. But we will muddle through.
A thought-provoking movie: The Road (2009) with Viggo Mortensen.
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The Human Predicament: A Candid Guide to Life's Biggest Questions
Are our lives meaningful, or meaningless? Is our inevitable death a bad thing? Would immortality be an improvement? Would it be better, all things considered, to hasten our deaths by suicide? Many people ask these big questions -- and some people are plagued by them.
The Human Predicament invites readers to take a clear-eyed and unfettered view of the human condition.
https://www.amazon.com/Human-Predicament-Candid-Biggest-Questions/dp/0190633816/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1508785230&sr=8-1&keywords=the+human+predicament+david+benatar
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Oct 24, 2017 - 05:12pm PT
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HFCS: too cute by half: It is an extension of the colloquial phrase "too clever by half." This refers to someone who is so proud of their cleverness that they flaunt it, undermining their overall appeal. I would guess that someone who is "too cute by half" exploits their natural cuteness, therefore making themselves overall less appealing.
Science.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Oct 25, 2017 - 07:59am PT
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A young Steven Pinker discusses relations between language and thought (incl vocabulary, invention of new words, nuance)...
[Click to View YouTube Video]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZDeYe93rFg
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"In 1965, the French philosopher Michel Foucault published Madness and Civilization in America, echoing Laing’s skepticism of the concept of mental illness; by the 1970s, he was arguing that rationality itself is a coercive “regime of truth”—oppression by other means. Foucault’s suspicion of reason became deeply and widely embedded in American academia."
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/how-america-lost-its-mind/534231/
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"is it not possible that science as we know it today, or a "search for the truth" in the style of traditional philosophy, will create a monster? Is it not possible that an objective approach that frowns upon personal connections between the entities examined will harm people, turn them into miserable, unfriendly, self-righteous mechanisms without charm or humour?" -Paul Feyerabend
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend
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"We need to adopt new protocols for information-media hygiene. Would you feed your kids a half-eaten casserole a stranger handed you on the bus, or give them medicine you got from some lady at the gym?"
-Kurt Andersen
Fantasy Land: How America Went Haywire
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Oct 26, 2017 - 02:08pm PT
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Saudi Arabia Gives Citizenship to A Non-Muslim, English-Speaking Robot
Sophia fielded complex questions about whether robots have consciousness and whether humans should be afraid of them. She ridiculed the fear of a Hollywood-style robot apocalypse.
This week, Saudi Arabia’s prince announced an ambitious plan to build a $500 billion mega-city populated by robots.
http://www.newsweek.com/saudi-arabia-robot-sophia-muslim-694152
"What are we, robots?!"
:)
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Oct 26, 2017 - 03:05pm PT
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Enough of this silly sci-fi talk about conscious robots. Robots are syntactic (symbol manipulators) machines, and there's nothing, not one shred of evidence that suggests that the processing of data is in any way relevant or related to being conscious of said data. A leading neuroscientist said, in reference to claims that Strong AI was legitimately in the works: "Nobody has any idea how to build a sentient machine. Telling someone to do so is like telling them to build a time machine."
When you look at hypothetical descriptions of machines "creating" sentience there is always some magical leap from processing to sudden and inexplicable self-awareness, as though it will naturally emerge without it ever having been understood. What's more, "understanding" sentience, to most AI geeks, rests on the philosophical belief that sentience is a mechanical output and that consciousness is a program which they can digitally duplicate.
The fantastic gullibility of people to believe what science fiction says is just as certain as Easter is what drives these beliefs, not anything that has ever been demonstrated - or even theoretically imagined in practical terms - in the real world.
The problem, I believe, is that the brain IS a syntactic engine in some manner of speaking evidenced by all the unconscious processes that go on according to our DNA and conditioning. But there is more, namely the fact that we are aware, and trying to build, bottom up, a machine that will eventually be conscious by way of complexity and processing or "emergent functions" remains, IMO, the stuff of all those wannbe Frankensteins dreaming of the day when they can say: "It's alive!"
So we ask: What's the difference between a sentient human and a syntactic engine? The same as between you and the dishwasher when washing the dishes. What’s the consequence? That any apocalyptic vision of AI can be disregarded.
The "singularity" remains the pyrite of all mind studies, so far as I can tell.
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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Oct 26, 2017 - 03:25pm PT
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"Nobody has any idea how to build a sentient machine. Telling someone to do so is like telling them to build a time machine."
I have no idea when, or even if, a sentient machine will ever be built, but saying that because we don't know how to do it today, it will never happen, is patently ridiculous.
Look around you. You are surrounded by things that, not so long ago, humans didn't have any idea how to build.
Will we ever have time travel? Will there be sentient machines someday? Maybe, and maybe not. But if not, it won't be because we don't have them (or have any how to achieve them) now.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Oct 26, 2017 - 04:58pm PT
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I have no idea when, or even if, a sentient machine will ever be built, but saying that because we don't know how to do it today, it will never happen, is patently ridiculous.
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Not remotely so, if you are jiggy with logic.
Just because a nut hasn't been cracked is not proof or even an indication we can and will crack it. What's more, admitting that we don't know how today in no way assures us that "one day" we WILL know how, based on the technological advances in other fields. That is, saying that 12th century man didn't know how to fly but eventually he figured it out is not an argument for the plausibility of Strong AI.
From a logic perspective, you need to investigate your first assumptions.
For example, when you say, "know how," how do you mean it? What would "knowing how" actually look like in real world terms?
My guess, so far as this thread goes and people's common fealty to computer and mechanistic metaphors, is that "knowing how" would mean understanding the mechanism that "creates" sentience, which assumes that a mechanism DOES create it, and that eventually, SOMEONE will crack the code to this mechanism and viola - "It's alive." And if you take issue with the word or implications of the word mechanism, then consider the word "output," and said output would be the result of processing of some kind. That is, stacastic engines (symbol manipulators), the belief goes, can output sentience. And so sentience itself is the consequence of the manipulation, networking, or interface of processing agents.
This is one of the most persistent falacies in Strong AI - that it is settled that sentience is a mechanistic output and that if the brain can "create" it, so can some AI geek once he/she builds the mainframe and writes the program just so.
Making a case that something not yet realized IS possible is a probabalistic exercise, the probability of which is derived from real life indicators, or evidence that suggests this or that is likely or at least possible. That is - if you buy into the mechanistic/computer metaphor for sentience, then you have to provide some evidence that complexity, processing speed and data crunching are somehow related to being aware of same.
Not only is there no such evidence, but as the neurodude so recently said, they don't even have a model of how mechanistically created sentience would even look like, ergo the task is on par with building a time machine because nobody knows where one would even start.
All told, the "some day" argument is not an actual argument but a philosophical belief drawn not from any indicators from current or even imagined digital or quantum machines "creating" sentience, but from the wonky idea that if something is not theoretically impossible, someone will "some day" be the modern day Dr. Frankenstein. And that, in my book, IS "patently ridiculous."
Fact is, no one in AI is actually working directly on sentience. One of the pipe dreams is that as they continue to work on weak AI, sentience will simply present itself before anyone knows what it actually is. It will simply "emerge" from the processing, like steam off a kettle.
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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Oct 26, 2017 - 05:05pm PT
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Not remotely so, if you are jiggy with logic.
Just because a nut hasn't been cracked is not proof or even an indication we can and will crack it. What's more, admitting that we don't know how today in no way assures us that "one day" we WILL know how, based on the technological advances in other fields. That is, saying that 12th century man didn't know how to fly but eventually he figured it out is not an argument for the plausibility of Strong AI.
From a logic perspective, you need to investigate your first assumptions.
No, from a logic perspective, you need to re-read my post.
How you got from me saying "I have no idea when, or even if, a sentient machine will ever be built, but saying that because we don't know how to do it today, it will never happen, is patently ridiculous." to you thinking I said that us not knowing how to do it now is somehow proof or even an indication that one day we will know how, is beyond me. My guess is you read a couple of words and then assumed the rest.
I haven't got the faintest idea whether we'll ever be able to build time machines or sentient machines, but us not knowing how to do that now doesn't say anything -- one way or the other -- about whether we'll figure it out in the future.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Oct 26, 2017 - 05:34pm PT
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Not only is there no such evidence, but as the neurodude so recently said, they don't even have a model of how mechanistically created sentience would even look like, ergo the task is on par with building a time machine because nobody knows where one would even start
Time machines already exist. The astronaut moving at high speed in a rocket ship moves into the future according to a clock that runs slower than his counterpart's on Earth. Look up "Time Dilation" or the "Twin Paradox"
"No such evidence now" is weak sauce for an argument.
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 26, 2017 - 06:05pm PT
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Time machines already exist.
You are dreaming.
No gross materialists has ever controlled time nor will they ever ........
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Oct 26, 2017 - 07:51pm PT
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We are proof that some arrangement of matter and energy is a formula for whatever it is that we’re calling intelligence.
If it arose naturally, it can be reproduced artificially. No more rigorous proof is necessary.
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This is the sum and substance of mechanical arguments for strong AI. My arguments question the basic assumption that sentience "arose" as an output of the brain. Comments like, "Where else would it come from" also assume it "came from" or was physically created. Cries of "magic" assume the same thing - that magic, instead of material, sourced the brain. We still have sentience being sourced by an agency, physical or magical.
I agree that it certainly seems that way. A person dies and so does his sentience.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Oct 26, 2017 - 09:00pm PT
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IMHO a time machine lets you travel into the past
Yes. Time dilation is not the same sort of thing.
;>)
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Oct 26, 2017 - 09:24pm PT
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^^^ You are arguing with a believer. Good luck.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Oct 26, 2017 - 09:44pm PT
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Your logic about AI is flawed. Just because we don't know how to program consciousness, doesn't mean that self programming machines can't become self aware, or conscious.
You open up a can of worms with this statement because if intelligence exists on a continuum in which AI is a superior intelligence to our own, then what are its ends? How superior can that intelligence be? It would seem logically that as long as you continue to improve the complexity of your machine and its algorithms the greater the intelligence without end and when will that intelligence become infinitely superior to our own? And isn't that an argument for the creation of some sort of ultimate intelligence and why wouldn't you call that ultimate intelligence God? It's fascinating to see science guys argue for the existence of God without even trying.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Oct 26, 2017 - 09:48pm PT
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^^^ Wildly speculative, but literate and entertaining.
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Contractor
Boulder climber
CA
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Oct 27, 2017 - 08:07am PT
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Largo-My arguments question the basic assumption that sentience "arose" as an output of the brain.
This is the question. At what point was the start button pushed? All evidence points to simple propagation as the driver and engineer of life and how it acts. Every step; the nervous system, the brain and sentience has elevated modern man to the threshold of interstellar propagation.
The nuance of love, hate, greed, revenge, morality and religion, have enhanced the number of avenues of advantage or success within our population. Our personal identification as, mostly good and benevolent beings and the creation of some intelligence is laughable- what God would make us? Let's not forget, there have been several populations of sentient beings in the genus, Homo. Evidence suggests they are gone because of us.
It stands to reason that IA is just another avenue that we are predisposed to explore in seeking an avenue of advantage. Our history shows we are willing to accept the risk that IA may one day be our replacement in the order of things and not just a vehicle. Of course AI won't care if it doesn't quite match up to our definition of a life form.
https://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/a-quantum-leap-in-computing
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 27, 2017 - 08:40am PT
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The de-evolution of modern consciousness is Artificial Intelligence.
It's the same as eating a lifeless plastic apple ...... this is what st000pid modern brainwashed gross materialists people want to eat.
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