From: Steve Nichols (steve@multisell.com)
Date: Tue Jan 15 2002 - 09:50:47 MST
Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2002 09:13:16 -0800
From: James Rogers <jamesr@best.com>
Subject: Re: Jaron Lanier Got Up My Shnoz on AI
On 1/14/02 7:35 AM, "Steve Nichols" <steve@multisell.com> wrote:
> J.R. Molloy wrote:
>> It looks as though Lanier confuses intelligence with sentience. We
already
>> have AI, as reported by John Koza almost two years ago in _Genetic
>> Programming and Evolvable Machines_, Volume 1, Number 1/2 (ISSN:
1389-2576).
>> Self-awareness, or sentience, is an epiphenomenon that emerges from
massively
>> parallel computational complexity such as the human brain engenders.
>While sentience may be emergent, massive parallelism will have nothing to
do
>with it. The brain is massively parallel because it was convenient in the
>evolutionary scheme of things, not because it is of intrinsic importance to
>sentience. Anything doable in massive parallelism is doable on a serial
>(i.e. "less massively parallel") processor.
Stuff can be SIMULATED in serial (cos the mathematics seems to boil
down to statistical mathematics) but this doesn't mean quality of massively
parallel and serial are IDENTICAL, so maybe for real-time speed serial
won't work.
>> There is no evidence for emergentism, and the philosophical case for
>> epiphenomenalism is weak at best. Complexity does not equate to
infinite-state
>> (self organising circuitry) since finite-state, hard wired systems can be
>> equally complex. Sentience, abstract thought, is only possible once a
circuit
>> has lost its external clock (primal eye) and become analog(ous to
>> infinite-state).
>I agree that complexity does not equate to infinite-state, but I don't see
>where J.R. was saying that it does. However, saying that abstract thought
>is only possible on clockless logic seems to be just plain wrong. Even
with
>clockless logic computation doesn't happen by magic, but what I really
don't
>understand is where the mathematics even requires it or treats it as
>different from clocked logic. Some elucidation would be useful.
No, JR wasn't saying that, but BRAINS are self-organising in hardware, not
just soft-programmable. Computers aren't sentient, E1-brains are! I am not
saying absolutely that sentience/ abstract thought is only theoretically
possible
on clockless logic (lost clock! Not even designed clockless) ... but you
can't argue
that it has only ever be obseved on this type of circuit!!!! Mathematics is
just
analogy, a fiction ... I am more interested in the biology and evolutionary
history
of how the E1-brain actually works ... nets don't model very neatly into
math
anyway cos never reach perfect rest states.
"Abstract" or "taken away from" thought needs a lost or abstract/ phantom
sens(or)gan ... the primal eye ... which is the biological external clock in
E2
brains. Has to be. I won't argue about it here as am busy putting
applications
from MVT into practice ... this is the breakthru technology that will
establish
boundaries between human and after-human philosophy.
>BTW, the link following that paragraph didn't seem to work.
Oooppps. Got syntax wrong: http://www.multi.co.uk/primal.htm
>Cheers,
>- -James Rogers
www.steve-nichols.com Posthuman Political Alliance
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Chaturanga! The Mother of All War Games
Ancestor of common chess (La Dame Enragee variant)
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