I must go and tell Don King!
Posted on 07/30/2002 5:45:59 PM PDT by sourcery
Installing a steel plate in place of a bone is a matter of a simple surgical procedure. Therefore, it should have long ago occurred as a natural mutation.
Maybe the author's reasoning would make more sense if I were super-intelligent....
Not really. The best you could hope to do is produce a perfect biological twin of the donor -- a clone, in other words. But copying the body of a human being is not the same thing as copying the human being him/herself. Naturally-occurring clones (identical twins) are genetically identical, but no one with any sense considers twins to be the same person; rather, they are (obviously) two genetically-identical but otherwise distinct human beings.
The map is not the territory. DNA is not a human being; it's a map of a given human being's biological structure.
B-chan
If you are talking about cell division and their lifetime, that is a different matter. The ends of chromosomes called telomeres get smaller after every cell generation, but are not involved in sexual reproduction. The resulting cell has full telomeres.
The bus driver, one of the select group that were the beatniks. He was trying to experience the present. The idea is that we don't perceive what is happening RIGHT NOW since there is a lag between our nerve endings and the receipt of the signal in the brain as well as a processing lag inside the brain. The driver was trying to reduce this lag. Whether he was successful no one knows, but he was certainly working on it. He eventually shorted out, fairly soon compared to most.
No matter how much processing is speeded up, the thinker will never quite operate in real time, can never be in the present moment. Even the man who photographs nuclear explosions has a problem no matter how carefully he sets up his camera and triggers. His camera will never open the shutter exactly at the instant of ignition. Close, microseconds or nanoseconds away, but never exactly then.
Our hyperspeed computing machines will never get the last picosecond, the last femtosecond, there is a limit even when the singularity is passed. All things are limited, the universe itself can never be perceived in real time by us or by our hyper-evolved machines even if the focus is on a single event.
It's one thing to attempt infinite computing power, another thing altogether to observe everything at once. Simple economics says infinite speed, solving an infinite series still won't get you to the PRESENT MOMENT.
Well, not entirely—I support what these guys are doing, and I'm a dyed-in-the-wool dualist. If the brain creates Mind as the monists think, then certainly AI is possible. If the brain merely hosts Mind, as I and (presumably) you think, then I don't see why in principle we cannot create a computer that is also capable of hosting Mind. It is no more remarkable for a soul to incarnate in a network of simulated neurons than in a network of actual neurons.
Yes, AI researchers are almost uniformly monists whose worldview I reject foursquare. However, that doesn't mean they're all on the wrong track. Any "top down" approach—coming up with some theory of "how consciousness works" and creating a device to simulate that theory—is doomed to failure, but the "bottom up" approach described here—creating a machine indistinguishable from the human brain and seeing what happens—is very promising. If such a device worked, it would revolutionize the material world but leave metaphysics fairly untouched, since it would still be impossible to tell whether the device was creating or hosting a Mind. If the device failed, on the other hand, monism would be dealt a deadly blow. I find either prospect extremely interesting and worthy of support.
No, sorry. Too much work!
Now that was funny! And I'm an atheistic (more precisely, agnostic) transhumanist!
I've never seen electrified meat.
But I have seen poultry in motion.
You mean, the SkyNet is falling?
I must go and tell Don King!
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
You just can't extrapolate to the future.
Take the speed of flight. At one time the speed of sound was a goal. Then that was broken and everyone figured that supersonic and hypersonic transport was just around the corner. Turns out that while technically possible, it just isn't economically feasible. Similarly, interplanetary space travel is technically possible, but no one is doing it in a meaningful way.
Similarly, any number of things could destroy Moore's law. In addition, he may find that simulating a human brain or a computer with the theoretical computing power of the brain is still nothing like a brain. I can bolt an 800hp engine on a tractor, that doesn't mean I can run it in a NASCAR event.
It amazes me how, since the beginning of human existence, mankind has continuously been searching for the answers to the meaning of life and often tries to derive this meaning from him or her self.
If you play out the theory of this argument, what it basically tries to do is place human beings at the center of the universe, by creating and developing its own Savior, in this case - artificial intelligence, which leads to our redemption - singularity. Relativistically speaking, of course.
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