no it does not prove it. I also do not know if we have a free will to decide freeley between the options available to us Free will does not mean to be able to fly if we want that, it mans just that: free choice between the options available top us in a given situation. that is how philosophy uses that term. Psychology. Jurisdiction (!). Your physics implication shas not much if anything to do with it, not in how the term usually is meant. Maybe you mean something very different? Omnipotency, maybe?

They also have a century-old debate of the conseqeunces if there is no free will. All ethics systems would brake down, then. Our laws to give penalties to people violating laws would not make any sense anymore. We would have no basis onto which to form social communities. But I do not wish to say by this that wee "must" have a free will else our societies would crumble. It's just what they debate in jurisidction, and since centuries.

I tell you - no scientist on earth truly knows what consciousness even is, and how it comes into existence. Thus we cannot say that we are able to simulate it. What is it, we simulate, then? We simulate nothing, we define algorithms by which an automatted installation functions according to pattern that we have defined in advance. By your definition, an emergency braking system in a train or a lift would have consiousness and intelligence when a certain threshold speed is surpassed and the brakes lock. Above somwehere, you said it all is about making decision, and by what you said, and autmmated reaction would be a machine making a decision. But that is nonsens. It compares at best to a biolgicaol reflex, but consiousness and decision-making have nothing to do in reflexes.

Man, don'T declare yolurself lower than you are! You are a man, but want to see you as nothijg better than a complicated piece of Fischer-Technik? that might havbe been fine under the paradigm of Descartes, and past times when it was thought all nature and the universe is just a machine, often with a predefined fate and future. But we have moved beyond that, for good reasons.

No, a Vermutung is based on some kind of information that is considered to be logically linked to the object of conjecture. But when all you have is speculation only: playing around with it never will lead you anywhere than just speculations, as long as you have no better data quality available to feed into your mind games.

You know as well as I do that until the early 90s it was en vogue to compare the brain and the way it works and the results it creates, consciousness amongst these, to be comolared to the set of hardware a traditional computer is made of. I limit the understanding of "machinery" and "computer" to what we can imagien today for the sake of this discussion. But that is not the deciding point, but the important thing is the way in which data gets used by the mind-machine, no matter the hardware it is based upon. What bfuiture technolgies will bring, we can only make "conjectures" abiout for the short termed- future, and speculation for the very long run. Thus it remains unknown to us if ,machines of the future will ever create a true intelligence and consciousness of their own, or if they will be capable to become the new home and hull of biological consciousness (that's the theory most astronomers prefer, I got the impression, not the first). I was talking in this dicsussion of what we can forsee, at least with some reasons of justification. wild speculation is not my thing.

software today is neither-self-aware, nor creative, nor emotional, nor social. It does not have the ability to qiuestion it's own existence, to make deciisons to sacrifice itself or wanting to survive, it does not ask where it comes from, and how long it will be there. You see, all these are drives also are factors thatbinflence human'S mind, necessarily, we cannot escape that, and through our mmind thesy influence the way we live our lifes, and approach challenges and find solutions and make decisions. It all is part of this mega-label "intelligence". And if software develoepment alone will have what it takes to truly create out of nothing such qualities, is unknown. It does not adapt to thse concepts right now, as you claim, because it even has no cognitive representationt hat such qualities do exist. And later you say that it nevertheless cannot right now, but will be in the future. Let's see.

At school we learned Pascal (first half of the 80s), and I later used GFA 3 Basic on the amiga, btw. :D

Interesting theory, although not new. But still a brain orgnaoizes and processes information different than a CPU, and what the human software is made of, it it can be called that way, still is not really known: we have many theories, but no solid understanding. And how the brain biologically can be self-organizing, and why software can chnage areas of the hardware'S functioning patterns (in case of damage, foreign, different brain ohers can tkae over function from areas that before were used for different function): this interaction also is not explained, we only observe for sure that it exsits. the understanding of the brain is very different to what it was seen like just 20 years ago, the past twenty years have not been evolutionary, but revolutionary.

Abwarten. Let's wait, watch and see. The brain is a limited object with precisely defined boundaries, yet it seems to include unlimited, infinite storage capacity. Physically that is a paradoxon like a perpetum mobile creating energy out of nothing or by ivesting less energy than is being won in return.

C'mon.

What I said is you should not fatalistically nor uncritically embrace all and every process running just becasue it is there. We can choose. We can decide. We can decide against a certain technological tred or process. Did you hear that the Transrapid in Munich yesterday was put to grave? ;) Too expensive. We can decide against buying coca cola, an druin the company. We only need unity. Or we need to represent the decison makers of the company and decide to shut it all down.

You think binary here :) and argue lioke "all or nothing at all". I did not say to abandon all technology. I said to be more respnsible in our deciison makings what kinds of technology we want to drivbe, and what bbetter not. Not all technology there are - must be realsised. Not all that can be done - must be done for no other reason that it can be done. sometimes it is decisions about a certain proiject, like this huge dam in china (envrionmental and social costs putting it into question), a TV-handy (apparently bcoming a flop for nobody wants to watch long movies on a 4x3 cm display), or the transrapid. Sometimes it can be a decision about general trends and new technology classes. And not always we must accept everything of these just becasue it popped up from according research. but since these researchers are driven by business interests and investements by business comanies, we may need to tackle these economic interests for defending our freedom to decide for or against such things.

Obviously I do not agree with you on this. I have said repoatedly and quite clearly in terms what I emant, and how I define terms and issues like intelligence. It's just that from your extremely limited perspective of wanting to be a technologist, as you name it, you maybe cannot follow that. As I see your argumentation, you attempt not to understand reality , but to pick it and squeeze it and minimize until it is so small that you can carry it with one hand and the means of your technologistical set of tools can handle it. In other words you do not adapt to wide reality, but you try to make it so small that it must adapt to your defintions of it.

Then you have never spoken with physiopsychologists. BTW., I have left psychology years ago, for not the same generalizing complaijts you made, but for being critical of ceertain trneds in talking psychology and therapy, too. But that does not chnage that, like I said just above, you express annoyance with psychology only becasue it deals with qualities your fanatical technologistcal approach cannot and never will understand. And that psychology has nothing accieved at all, is simply totally wrong. The problem I see with it is that it just claims more than it deserves, or can justify, and opportunistically also produces a lot of hot air.

You are not only a technologist, but an extreme materialist then, too. but that is your problem, not that of psychology. Too many experience in my life that tell me beyond doubt that there is more than just matter. In fact, you will hate me for it, like a physiology professors from ack then did, too, I do not agree on that due to a brain's activity, there is a mind - it'smore the other way around: becasue there is a mind not depending on matter, from this mind'S existence comes that there formed a brain.

Well, if you say so...

I think we better stop here.

Yeah... its all greek to me... :p

But you did get the general gist?


Oh.. and "foreigner" is such a harsh word.. I prefer "heathen" :know:

Yeh, I understood what you meant. ;)

No!
To say that if we had no free will we would chose to abandon ethics, the
punishment of crime and that our societies would crumble is a contradiction of terms.

To say that if we had no free will we would automatically and with out choice or will abandon ethics just shows that you overestimate the complexity of the human brain.

Firstly, everything that is conscious knows what consciousness is by definition.
What we can not do is identify it out side of our self; when we can not directly experience it.
If you hold that there is no possible way to identify it outside of our self, on what basis
do you assume an emergency braking system does not have it? On what basis do you
assume that an inert rock does not have it?

If it is physical, it is possible to detect. We have no reason to believe it is not physical
and so there is no reason to believe we will never be able to detect it, however complex
it may be.

That's nothing short of mysticism. :shifty:

How can you claim software is not self aware when you admit that we do not
"truly knows what consciousness even is" ?The only reason humans are creative, emotional, social, questioning of their own
existence, and have a will to survive is because they are programed to do so.

Utter mysticism again.
There is reason to belive in a mind that is in any way separate or different from brain activity.

Slowly but surely I'm getting tired of getting words I never said put in my mouth. Please note everybody that even small differences are important and can change the complete meaning

Fine. And who said that we would chose to abandon ethics? I did not.

the implicaion you fail to see is a totally different. If there is no free will, then you must necessarily conclude that in every situation man makes a decision to do or not to do something - he has had no other choice than to act the way he did. I assume that is a bit what GE meant when saying if one were going back in time to the same situation, one necessarily would do the same again, but he mixed it up). But if man has no other choice than to commit that crime, to act that way that is under penalty, to make that decision, it makes no sense anymore to put a penalty on him, to hold him responsible for it. Becasue he could not do any different than he did. now consider the consequences in education. Theology. Every aspect of accepting a post where you have to accept responsibility. Legal procedures. It all would break down, becasue it all and our legal culture as well is basing on that man is said to have a free will that enables him to chose. withoiut that freedom, there is no responsibility. without responsibility, nobody can be held responsible. Nobody being responsible for himself: and penlty loses it'S justification. so do ethics differing between good and evil - they become pointless.

So it is not about choosing to skip ethics. It is about ethics simply not being existent.

No. It simply is. Intellectual understanding is something different. Most people know some achademic defintions and know some theories of understanding it - but not before they made according experience, for example in meditation, they know that the qulaity of the experience and the words of the descritpion do not match.

Are you talking about consciousness, mind or "buddha-nature"? ;) A single screw does not make calculations of any kind, nor does it count the number of rotations. But of course I cannot look inside that screw. So although I cannot prove it I nevertheless claim that it has neither consciosuness nor intelligence. Forgive that I am that ignorrant.

A Fata Morgana is existent, too. you can see it. you can describe the details it shows. You can photograph and film it. you can explain it. Existent it is - but it is not real.

And I think you want to provocate, for the purpose of provocating. ;)

Poor robot you are, living in a robot world. Descarte's et.al. worldmachine, that is. But you know, I am still totally sure that that oold piece of software code I once wrote for creating a program for Mastermind - had not any consciousness and self-awareness at all.

Always arguing with extremes, eh?



I think it is getting absurd now. If some of you want to see themselves as nothing more than a highly developed type of automobile with a nice electronics suite, okay, fine, I honestly hope you will never reach a rank wehre you can do real damage, but beyond that it does not really bother me. What I say, is this:

1. A hardware kit with motors, sensors and a softweare code does not equal "intelliegnce2 as the term is used in cognitive science, in the meaning of a set of characteristics most scientist do agree on to be part of "intelligence".

2. A critical mind on wether or not to embrace this technolgy and that trend does not equal to completely deny technolgy. It means simply to choose wisely.

3. Isaac Asimov, certainly not suspicious to be a mysticist, said intelloigence is what an IQ is measuring. I would point out, that word-and-paper tests do not measure anything: a testform has no sensor. Mqany psychologists would agree on certain key features of what intelligence is, but there is no one, single super-defition of it that has general consensus. the defintions depend on the perspectives of the varuious scientific fields. I also say that intelligence per se does not exist, but that the term is a meta-label for a collection of qualities that all interact and come together in order to create something that is greater than the sum of the signle components/qualities. If these qualities ever can be created by software as we define "software" today, is no certain thing, and even not a theory - it is speculation. we do not know if it can be, or not. We need to wait and see. But we can deal with the question until then, if it is even desirable to acchieve that. The understanding of "artifical intelligence" as it is used in software engineering I see as missing key features and being qualitatively inferior to what is adressed as "intelligence" in cognitive sciences. It's the same term used for two very different things.

4. trying to make the human brain being seen as a kind of computer kit, is absurd, and is rejected both by the very different weay a brain functions, and what is coming as a result from this functioning. It was an analogy that vecame popular during the hype around spreading PC technologies in the late 70s and all 80s, but today, most brain researchers reject this analogy, saying it does help the reputation of PC technology, but is crippling the understanding of what brain is. when I finished studying in the late 90s, it was not much popular anymore - except with technicians. But they claim more than what is theirs.

5. Finally, neurons in the brain are not the fastest neurons we know, yet this slow processor - the brain - is "computing" signals incoming in a way that the result not only outmatches that of computer calculations in qualitative terms, and often also in quantitative terms, but also create qualities that in the signals themselves are not even present. We see sharp images in our brains, for example - but the lenses in our eyes do not produce these, they form images that at least are distorted by 3.5 diopters, often even more, up to 6, and 7. Why and how are the signals manipulated to form "sharp images" if ourt brain never experienced by signal input what sharp images are? Brain then creates additonal information whose link to the data may or may not be known to the mind. You may smell a certains scent without being aware of it - but suddenly having a long lost memory on your mind, or a certain mood you once experienced. You taste something - and experience an emotion. You loisten to something, and feel a mood. The type of signal input does not equal the type of data result that is produced. You muscles may remember reaction patterns that feed back into the brain and make you do things you do not have recallable in your intellect'S memory. Your brain outsources data into books and the internet, and takes advantage of knowledge it never has formed itself. You literally can think beyond your limits. And in context of meditation, deep mediation and states of chnaged consciousness that may result in changed neurochemical status but is not caused by them, you even eventually can make the experience of leaving all this behind and see beyond. That'S why I use to say that time is an invention by the intellect only, but in fact is only a function deriving from brain activities, but no really existing quality of the "outside" world. Also that is why I say that mind is first - and then comes the brain. I think I was unprecise above somewhere, mixing up consciousness and mind. awareness is a third different quality, but I wonder if that maybe gets lost in translation, i sometimes think English and German use these terms differently, somewhat.

So in the end, use that robodog if you think you have a use for it - but don't call it artificial intelligence, and you can be interested, fascinated, whatever - but don'T make more of it than what it is: a machine. I love Science Fiction, too, but I can see the difference between what is and what is imagined to be, and know that some things from past science fiction turned into reality, others not. Oh, and I use a computer and many modern gadgets of present households. so much for me being a technophobe.

That is not an implication I have "failed to see", it is not an implication at all!
We are generally programed to punish people because of the way our social minds
work. There is no meta-reason beyond that, free will or not.

Of course ethics are not physically existent! They are just systems that result from
the way our social brains work. So is the concept of responsibility. That would be no
different if we had free will or not.

So what is your basis for deciding if something (other than your self) is concise or
not?
I put it to you that your only basis for such decisions is weather or not your mind
feels compelled to act socially towards the entity and that it is this, rather than any
rational reason, that leads you to believe that a machine can not be conscious.

The phenomenal experience is existent and real. Only the conclusions you might want
to make from it might be false.

when I started reading that sentence I assumed you where talking about a human:
"A hardware kit with motors, sensors and a software code"

This much I have no problems with.

I have no doubt that thinking of a brain like we think of a computer is a waste of
time.

Equally, thinking of a computer as a series of logic gates is a waste of time, it will not
help you play silent hunter.

Thinking of a computer that is as complex, or more complex than the human brain
in the same way that you might think of a computer available these days is most
likely a waste of time in the same way.

Contradiction of terms. Clearly incorrect.

You still think I am being in just to accuse you of mysticism? :shifty:

Oh, I don't make any claims about bigdog at all!

Hey no need to get angry skybird. I admit I was making some exaggerations about psychology - I always like to exaggerate (other people have compained about it before) - and it was just revenge for you brushing aside computer science - which psychology is clearly competing with on the field of artificial intelligence - and for declaring someone of the capacity as Asimov as "moved beyond by time".

And it was not very nice to call me "fanatical" - I am also a critic of unbiased slavish worship of technology - because that is a fatal disregard of nature.

But I think I have already understood why you feel so compelled to play down the significance of the next gen robots: in your discipline everyone is jealous that computer science has results to show - which must be a shock after those long years when everyone could ridicule cs because it could not even create a machine that walks let alone possesses the intelligence of the lowest insect. Now we see we are getting close to that point. Let me make it clear that I never said big dog is "very" intelligent. Yet I see it possesses that little bit of intelligence which is required to move. But it could be combined with a purpose - like walking around and surviving or - seeing who funds the development - to "kill", as well as a way of feeding itself (it could burn dry wood with a "holzgaser"), and we would have created a primitive lifeform. I think that deserves to be hailed as a major first step towards artificial life, not more.

And I agree with you insofar that it has not brought us any closer to an artificial consciousness.

However sadly you made two fatal errors in your reply to my last post, when you were admitting what I had claimed in an earlier post: that you are latently religious.

Oh-oh. Clearly you must have meant something else when you wrote this. An infinite number of permutations from a finite set - this defies mathematics. And that is profoundly unscientific, as you will certainly agree.

That is intelligence. We must reduce reality to an abstraction because there is no way to fully understand reality. To do so would mean squeezing a quart into a pint pot. Or will you deny that a pebble in reality consist of a 100 billion atoms in a specific geometric / energetic configuration. Or do you want to go that far with your wide reality?

Now here you are finally retreating into the realm of religion.

But I do not hate you for that - in fact I like you because you have the guts to develop and defend your own ideas against anyone. That makes you a difficult person, but keep it up!

Well thats good for you. But these are not even object oriented (but procedural languages), i.e. level of the 1970s. Today we have ontological modelling, neuronal networks, adaptive algorithms, game theory, computer vision, parallel computing, etc. I am not trying to sound smart here, you should just fresh up your ideas about advanced programming - it is no more limited to mere calling of subroutines - instead you can already create dynamic programs in which you need not know how they are exactly solving the problem. But of course its still not nearly enough to tackle the problem of intelligence.

Sorry I must keep busting your balls, really sorry. I am acting on the assumption that someone with your capacity will be able to handle it ;)

Okay, then claim credits for rewriting several centuries of that part of philosophy thinking about laws and justice, becasue for them it is a problem being hotly ebated since this: since centuries. that ethics fade when their would be no free will, and free will is a precodntion for ethics having any point, is a logical implication, and very much so - but you must not be aware of it, if you don't want to. It's your free will to reject elemenatry logic.

Now I must laugh. That is amateur sociology at work. .

A philosphy is not physically existent. Thanks for pointing at the obvious.

Nevertheless there is a lot of books on ethics, and traditions of ethic codes. And this may be good so, if you do not see why, live in an anarchistic society under the law of the strongest for a whil, and if you are tough and strong a guys, and survive evbemtuelly, report back and tell us of your experiences of living without ethics that differ between good and evil,l right and wrong. People are assumed in our cultural tradition to have a free will that gives them the freedom to choose for bad or good, and it is like this in most cltures there are or were. If they choose for the bad, they deserve penalty. If there is no free will, people cannot decide, if they cannot decide and are preprogrammed rehgarding their decision, they are not responsible for their action - because they had no choicer anyway,and already were decided anyway. So no ethics are needed anymore to separate between bad and good.

How much energy does it take you not to see that - or at least that'S what you say? Sometimes you often give me the feeling that you do not necessarily mean what you say, but raise abstruse resistence only for the sake of resistsing to something, no matter what. maybe becasue you so often go to extreme mind experiments and haisplitting that cannot be generalised. However, I find it interest-killing.

That is not what I said. i said much more, and that "much more" had an even greater amnd complex meaning, and refers to the basis of decision-making not as a solid basis, but so,emthing like an every-chnaging- ever
-öearning, ever-adapting continuujm. you do not seem to understand that i do not have such ,mechanistic, linear understandings fo the likes you demand from me. You could as well ask me for the one shape of a cloud, and if I tell you that there is not the one shape of clouds, accuse me of not answering your question.

You could give an imoression of an answer by what I already said. If you would want that instead of wanting to disagree. I pointed at it at least three times in this thread now, i just counted.

If man is not more for you than a Cylon toaster, I cannot help you.

I be more precise: your thinking has the ability to reach farther on basis of past won knowledge, than what initially would have been possible to think. You even can change thinking mode/model, and synax and semantics, or the thing that you would call the software - it can transform into something totally different than it intially has been. Of course, it also can just grow, ba adding new features and keeping the rest. You can use higher smybolic codes of communication, like you use mathematics to make precise statements on things that in hard solid facts and images you cannot imagine. Your thinking can grow in capability, both quality- and quantity-wise. Your thinking can lead itself beyond it's intial capabilities, breaking these intial limits.

Since I cannot word and deliver such my own experiences, and nobody not sharing them would be able to understand (which leaves the only option to comminicate about them with somebody who shares them, which would make the communication useless alltogether), I don't know, and am not much interested in it anyway. I think by your first posting you are in giving a purely mechanistic position, very much like GE. That's how I read your replies, whcih I perceive as bringing matters to a head, which often is the case and leaves my wondering my somebody alws is thinking in highly specific extremes. But that produces the old reliability-validity-dilemma, soemthign your postings also often remind me of. That way, I fail to see them being relevant for the usual everyday routine of events, and being valid only for a highly pointed, tightly constructed thought-set that is so tight that it does not cover much of what is relevant for "standard" reality.

I became angry at the end of your posting indeed. Maybe turning that direction in your posting towards generally accusing another branch of scineces wasn't that good an idea. I am very critical of psychology myself - but at least I have a better insught perpsective why i am. Yours were generalised catch-phrases.

I do not minimize asimov, hell, i even do not know much about his scientif work, I only new some of his fiction. but the laws of robotics he formulated cleraly are already ignored sicne years, if not decades. I again refer to the many robots the military uses - and even a missile that steers itself is a robot, so is a cruise missile, and you okow what kind of autonomously operatin drones are next. none of them gets the three laws of robotics programmed into their digital heads, and they do not manifestate all by themselves. Also, they would conflict with a weapons intention.

I adapted to you.

Total nonsens you tell. I do not play down future robotics. I said we should choose wisel what kind of technological ways we want to walk in the furutre, and what better not. If not totally uncritically embracing all and everything that is new equals "total rejection" for you in your opinion, i cannot help it. I am aware that that robodog's software is an achievement. but neither is it that unique as it seems, there are several other robots walking autonomously on 2, 4 and 6 legs, and i refuse to call that machine an intelligent entity. It is not intelligent. It is intelligently designed (if that is not ironic when Skybird talks of intelligent design...), but the intelligence is 100% on side of the engineers and programmers here, not on side of the machine. Man, it's just a machine! A machine more developed than some others, but a mahcine. no awareness, no consciousness, no intelligence. Just cleverly programmed software, made by homo sapiens. An automat. Like a kitchen times allowing to program six alarm times simultaneously.

and finally, psychology is not "my " discipline. but I can tell you as an insider that while there have a lot of things gone wrong in it's history, for the main regarding it's self-perceived competito9n with classical physcis's working methods that it uncritically copied without ever asking if that made sense, i can assure you that I never heared of any psychologist who is driven by the demand to compete with software enginners regarding intelligence. The e ngineers started the idea of a competiton, not the psychologists. Cognitive science and psychology simply deals more or less competently with human intellignce, and has little inteerst, if no none, in software developement of that kind. You twist things very much.

not more? New lifeform? That? I cant take you serious with that vstatements, sorry. Yolun want to claim far more fame for your business than it deserves, and when not being givent hat, you complain about being totally rejected. I do not totally reject it, I just do not compare it to such unreasonable, totally overblown standards: neither standards that label a thing like robodog "intelligent", nor standards that consider such a machine to be a pürmive lifeform.

Do you know www.dream-aquarium.com ? It is the most realistically quarium screensave I ever saw, its worth to have a look, really. Tell me: these realstically moving and -looking fishes - are the also "oprimtive lifeforms" and is the screensave a primitve early stadium of an aquarium?

Hardly.

So my compliments for achieving what has been achieved with robodog, and bets wishes for future developement. But don't excpect me to see it as either intelligent or a lifeform. If a machine can be that, needs to be seen in a far away future, and since we have no experience with livbing, intelligent machines, we do not know if that is possible, thus all expectations remain to be speculative. You hope for it, that is okay, I liked Science fictiontoo, and have sympathy for it.

buit I don't taske it for granted that it will be like that, someday. and I also do not take it as granted that in that furutre world, it even will be a desirable option. because we do not know how the far away future will be, and what man will be, then.

am I? No, I am not - more precisely, i attack religion at every opportunity and hack it into pieces. But like all man, I am - amongst other qualities that define us as human being - a spiritual being, int he meaning that i, .ike verybody, searches for answers to Why am I here, how long do i live, where do I come from and where do I go, etc. Homo sapiens is spirtual, and that is a necessary effect of being self-aware, and forming a clever mind, short: developing this set of qualities that I sum up under the meta-label "intelligence". In the end, sprituality means much the same like being self-reflective, for which self-awareness probably is a precondition. and you can see even some apes, well, actually even birds being that self-aware, and thus I conclude: being self-reflective to a certain degree.
but they probably are not religious, since relgion is an invention of man. to me, sprituality and religion are mutually exlusive. I fight against relgion. I cannot ecape to be necessarily spritual. and i don't know if you really munderstand what I mean by "spritual".

So what is it you think i latently be? ;) Keep it simple: I am mortal. that is as precise as it gets.


I dp not, and mjiust tell you that this is widespread standrd of reasearch. While memories are linked by some to chemical molekues storing them, there is not much objection in brain-reaearch that nevertheless the brain has a system, a model, a call-it-what-you-want to store memories in a way that stroage capacity is never ending. that probaly is why the brainS memory operate in a kind og holographic mode indeed. every single memory-quality does not just claim some space, but chnages the structure of the complete memory system, and in every smallest quantity of this memory, all memories can be found, like you have all visual information of the complete hologram in every single piece and bit of it if you brake it. We even have learned in experiemnts, that the brain has this capability of storing all in all places in total completeness, too. That siurpasses chemical local storing of data. It also surpasses of what a harddrive is doing.

As I said, the past 20 years in bain research have been revolutionary.

Yes it is - yours, the engineer's - not the machine's. ;) No kidding. Else your colleagues wouldn'T have been able to program that damn thing of a robodog. ;)

Not in the context of software engneering. I also said nothing like what you give above.

But I could have a new debate with you on the fact that atoms are 99.99999...% nothingness, and particles are just random clouds and tendencies to exist. Or in short, we enter the world of incredoibly far-leading abstraction now. Ore that the conept of time we have - probably is an illusion. Some physicist whose name I forgot, was quoted with this: in thenend it all is mind that dances with itself. A famous book by Gary Zukav tells the reader, that the Chinese word for physics translates into "Wu Li - structures of organic energy". A biuddhist might tell you that it all is just images, that are mepty, on ly the mind there is. One mind. - If I would have a new debate, that is.

See above what I said on relgion and spirituality. It makes no sense for me to split human nature inti these many different things that all are forming into one thing and each of them being necessary to give a complete image and defintion of what man is. Yes, I do not keep sprituality out of science, and many famous physics did not do that, too. but I keep relgion out of it, and spirituality maybe means somethign different for me, than what you thinkn - i don't know what you think.

I don't defend what i see as not defendable, and unreasonable, doing that would make me a very stupid person. but I try to form opinions that are so well-founded that later i must hopefully not correct them too often. that is only reasonable acting, imo.

Ehem - I was not serious. that GFA and Pascal do not compare to today'S standards, I can conclude myself. I finished school in 1985 ;)

I can't see you busting my bubbles - can you handle that yourself? ;) On some very fundamental basis, which is more abiout general paradigm of world oritnetation and not just software and technologx and psychology, we totally disagree. That's how it is, and it is not any different.

I am tired of it. But I cant let go as long as you - in between your very interesting passages - keep falling back to your "spiritual" phase, when it all gets ludicrous again.

Skybird you have a bad habit of reading and typing too fast and trying to drown disagreement with sheer verbosity. This is not the first time that you have barely skimmed my words and then accused me of something I never said.

I read your - very unintelligible - ideas about infinite storage in holograms, transmathematic structures and spiritualist science - nothing short of a mixture of mysticism and science as Letum said - if we were at university I think sooner or later it would lead to your removal from the lecture room - unfortunately.

Of course not because they can not interact with the physical world. Robots who: walk autonomously | feed | fulfill a purpose can.

But in the end you have agreed that big dog is an achievement and we both agree that technology must be critically monitored and sometimes limited. Apart from that we will never agree - but it is not really important if human is spiritual or a supercomplex information system - in the end our existence stays the same. As to AI, the main work is still to be done, so we can only let it begin and limit the dangers of it.

Lets not forget that this thread was actually about the dangers, and the primordial shock of artificial life forms, not about spiritualist world models.

Very good. In the end it would not make a difference if we don't have a free will, thats why my self doesnt fight against this idea. I we indeed had no free will we would still continue debating the question, possibly until the end of humanity. Every thing stays the same without a free will.

I like that definition.

I would also say everything that believes to have consciousness is conscious.

Lets say I could create a program - with about the same deducting capabilities as the human brain - where all low level activity is controlled by one high level structure "Self". I could then also hard wire a mechanism "Consciousness" to constantly feed in the realization to be conscious, very much like the human illusion to have consciousness and free will. It would also require a mechanism to reflect on thoughts, i.e. analyze it's own processes and create new processes from that.

When asked, this computer system would say that it has consciousness, and it would also raise questions about the meaning of consciousness, because it will not find logical explanation of this thing, yet it must believe in the existence because it can experience it.

I am not sure if that would be enough to solve the problem of artificial consciousnss, but the end result would be a machine that believes to be a conscious self exactly like a human.

Where this consciousness takes place is a good question - it is out of this world - very much like skybird say - like every self is out of this world. I can see where the spirirualism comes from, yet for me the spirit is also physical, it only comes about through complexity.

GE,
I typed a reply , but then found myself to be so annoyed by your arrogance and accusing me of what you extensively did - and do -yourself, that I just found it is no longer worth it for me to reply. As I see it you do not adapt to the standards set by reality, and the world, but try to make both adapting to your toolbox. You mix up the process of simulation with the object of simulation. But that simply is not my problem, but yours, and yours alone.

Such accusations are empty with out even the most basic reasoning behind them SB.

You're welcome skybird ;)

Just to make clear what we have been discussing here.

Among other things there was dissent to which extent future developments of this robot, once it is provided with a purpose, a way too feed, to survive several years in a (harsh) environment, and other functions could be seen as a (primitive) artificial lifeform - like an insect that cannot reproduce - or not.

http://www.christian-wendt.org/SUBSIM/robot1.jpg

Later I defended the opinion that it seems possible to construct a machine that calculates all thought processes characteristic to the human brain, including a sense of consciousness.

I basically took the position that if the thought "I feel I am alive" can take place inside the human brain - it might as well take place inside a computer. The implications are the same, i.e. the machine will believe to be conscious, very much like we do.

Of course I have no idea if technology will get that far or if we hit a brick wall somewhere, or if we even want to build such a machine.

Unfortunately it got a bit heated - and I was declared more or less insane - but I don't take it to heart.

http://www.christian-wendt.org/SUBSIM/robot3.jpg