12:15:38 -0000
From:Flossposs@yahoo Subject:
------------------------------Date: Mon, 29 Nov 1999From: "Technotranscendence"
> >"understanding" is the tongue that tastes itself>
> Yes, I too can give a vague description of the
concept.
I don't think it's vague so much as nonsense.:)
> >to make the program "understand" introduce a
paradoxical> >circuit>
> You can get these in radio shack?>> >its inability
to understand anything will
> >surmount to its "understanding" of everything.>> No
it won't.
I concur. If that would give a machine understanding,
then how come
computer programs with bugs in them don't start having
conversations with us?
I think understanding is going to be a lot harder and
a lot easier than
that. Harder because it will not involve some
sophomoric zen-likeformulae.
Easier because if we just look at how we apprehend the
world we mightbe
able to just develop machines that understand by
mimicking us, then removing the inessential.
The problem with radio shack is that it dissapates with each circuit, if the noise was perpetually amplified, then the foundations for "understanding" would exsist.
How long would it take the people in your world
surrounded by "bare essential <mimick-understanding>"
AIs to start to mimick the AIs.
A which came first sinario developes equating to
another zen-like paradox, you cannot escape that
easily.
(If the bugs are atall conserned with us they talk
about us, not to us.)
Rob Harris:
>An absolute morality is a pipe dream born out of
our desire for cosmic "importance".
As absolute morality is based on understanding I suggest we stick this overinflated consept down the same pipe. My personal feelings on this are that we do have great cosmic importance but so equally does every other peice of matter and (antimatter) in the universe. Interestingly if you put morality into this equation our "morals" are of equal importance to those of interstella dust clouds.
Rob:
>The reason I post to this list is to use your fine
brains to bounce my ideas off, and if people don't get
their feathers ruffled a bit, they don't
negatively evaluate the idea and post a response.
This list is the perfect court for bounceing around ideas, but ruffleing feathers in order to get a responce will be uneffective in reaching the more finely tuned of minds, it will also be unproductive as people spend more time in defence mode than playing ball...let the game continue.....