Kai Becker wrote:
>
> Am Sonntag, 16. Dezember 2001 06:41 schrieb Eliezer S. Yudkowsky:
> > What is this spirituality stuff? Where does it come from? How does it
> > work? Can we see it in action? Which parts of the human mind are we
> > talking about here?
>
> You could see it as a backup system that kicks in when everything else
> fails. It tries to create working hypothesis all the time, about the things
> outside the known facts, personal experience and especially about incidents
> that do not fit into the known facts. Not enough specification to construct
> a chip, I know...
No, actually that's plenty of specification. But I'm not sure Samantha
would agree with your definition. There's nothing mystical about a
cognitive process like that.
> It also acts as a buffer between reality and emotions like fear, anger,
> happyness and grief. Oh, I think you should first look what this emotional
> stuff is. Where it does come from, how it works, which parts of the human
> mind we are talking about. Ahem, you know emotions, do you?
Yes, I do. I have no difficulty at all in describing emotions. If that
is what Samantha is talking about then she is using a needlessly mystical
term for it. Perhaps it *is* what she's talking about, but I don't think
that she *thinks* that's what she's talking about; so I'm asking, and will
continue to ask until I get enough data that I can be fairly confident I
know what Samantha thinks she's talking about. She may not be able to put
words to her feelings, or may not wish to put words to her feelings, but
I'm fairly confident that I can put words to her feelings once I know what
they are. After all, I take more than a casual interest in explicit
descriptions of cognitive processes.
-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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