[Skybird]

Originally Posted by GlobalExplorer

Everyone who watches these videos will take part in a important moment in human history, because it their first contact with an alien creature. One that we have created ourselves, and that has not even the capabilites of an insect, but will have in our lifetime. And beyond that it will make us obsolete.

Not so dramatic, the robodog is NOT unique. In Lübeck, Germany, for example they have develoeped an autonomous spider with eight legs that also walks all by itself. It is just not as hectical, but rests more stable on the ground. and there have been other experiments like this, two.

Ok you are not . I only contest the idea that human intelligence is unique. And I do so on the ground that it is a technophobe refuge to capitulate before a problem of such proportions as artificial intelligence. And lack of imagination, or maybe fear.

I did not say that human intelligence is unique. I said that it does not compare to a software running on a traditional PC, and that the hu7man brain does not compare to the hardware of a computer. I could imagine many different ways of higher intelligence. I even do not wipe out the idea that maybe some species on Earth are as intelligent as humans, and maybe just too different as that we would realise that. Right now, research even is rewriting all that we seemed to know about certrain brainstructures being a precondition for intelligence in birds. what is currently said and formed and found there, is a silent revolution nobody takes much note of.

Your main point is that the analogy between computer (hardware) and human intelligence is untenable. You then go about proving your statements through purely psychological arguments. But all you prove to me is that the brain is much more complicated than we can imagine. Of course it is.

I yet see no convincing argument that the human brain is not a biochemical computer. From what is known today it is based on network organization and signal exchange. The neurons and chemical agents of that process represent the hardware. The memes of Humanity are the software, and it differs from individual to individual.

A PC harddisk cannot take over functions of the processor. A CPU does not calculate and store in holographic patterns. A GPU cannot learn by itself to prolduce sounds. A mainboard does not change it's hardwiring. A human brain does not think in binary code. A PC cannot become aware of itself, and cannot be emotional. A software code defines the limits of what a PC can do, and even self-programming software is by the intial code limiuted in what it can develope by itself in future self-programming. Just some points that are on my mind right out of the blue. Your enthusiams for computer hardware in all honour, but you exaggerate it, massively. In the forseeable future, computer wmaybe wioll mimic congntiojns by surrogate routines that give us the illusion of having cognitions, like the Japanese robots being given a human looks and face expressions give the illusions that they are a person with true emotions. but they are not, and comouters in the forseeable future will have no real cogntions. they will be programmed to "cheat" us on that instead.

But if this process can take place in a few litres of ordinary matter, it can do so on different hardware. Today we have not the computing power. Today we can create a few grains of sand (chess computers, walking robots, etc), but to rival human intelligence we need a desert. There are many steps to take, but the process is already taking place.

And still I say it does not compare. Computers and brains operate in two totally different working modes, the one in a digital, binary code, the other in a mode we yet have to understand, and maybe calling it holographic only is a rough approach on the real nature of "thinking". It is not about electricity being used in both "devices", it about how the sigmal'S structure is coded, and what is done with these very different types of information - and here at the very latest a brain "computes" different than a CPU.

What is your definition of intelligence then? For me there is no diffference between a decision made by a human or by a computer, as long as the decision has the same qualities. I see no way how I can prove you have consciousness (though I am sure you have buddy ), so what is the difference if I am talking with you or a computer with your intelligence?

I have repeatedly mentioned several factors now. Self-awareness. True autonomy. Emotions. Social drive. Curiosity, a playful "mind". Even if I do the same thing like a computer decides by his software (and me maybe having programmed the software) - you still do not know why this is so, and what my motivations and motives and/or biological drives are when doing this or that. Also, I have a completely different image on my mind about what I do, and why - and it may even change over time, and get distorted over time.

I can say that because I contest the concept of free will. It has already been put put to question through neuroscience (there is time lag between action and consciousness), but there are still more questions as to what this means than there are answers. Still there is a lot of indication that consciousness means only registering what has already happened.

I know what results yopu mean, but they also need to be seen in a wider context and a discussion (influencing theoretical thinking) that is leading beyond these results themselves. It is a complex theme, and I had a complete physiopsychological seminary just about this. So depite the latest findings that get interpreted in a very tight frame only, I still that the answer of wether we cry becasue our brain creates emtotions causing us to cry, or if we feel sad emptions becasue our brain made us crying is not answered. It is even possible that both events have no causal link, and just fall into the same time by random happening - then we even would need to think in terms of Jungian synchronicity.

Free will also defies physics. You think humans have a free will because they can go out of the flat and turn left and the next day they do the same and turn right? But a free will would require you can go back to yesterday and turn the other way instead. Only then you have a free will, because only then the other option existed.

that is flawed logic, because free will does not mean to be able to deafeat the laws of physics as our models define them, but to freely decide, and on this: see above. I do not want to open that can of worms, since it is VERY much material. and I admit I woudl need to refresh it before I enage in deeper discussion of neurophysiology and philosophical implications.

According to physics progreesing in time means moving in the fourth dimension, and every point in the past still exists. So you could go back to yesterday but everything would stay the same.

Now that leads VERY far. There are so many theories in modern physics, on alternate worlds, infinite worlds coexsting at the same time and the same place, worlds constantly getting created by deciding between options and thus splitting the universe in on e where one option, and one where the other options was choosen. That bis fascinatin stuff, but I think there is a reason why I use to read a whole book when wanting to compare these many theories and implications, often from quantum physics.

You would always turn left -> You have no free will, at least not in the way we have come to accept. So there is no difference between you and a machine that behaves like you.

Sorry, but that comparsion I cannot see to be founded by your example (which is an assumption only, btw.: when you could go back in time, to that crossroad: why are you so sure that while decided once to move left, you would do it again and not different, when the same situation would return? Quantumk physics made that a questuionable assumption, for they paradoxically both guarantee randomness that cannot be calculated on a very basic level of the universe as we constructed it in our models, nevertheless claims the possibility of non-causal links, while theoretic physics even thinks about particles moving backward in time). But that is again a discussion in itself.

I think that is indeed he only difference between our points of view on that matter.

No, it is one difference, but not the only one.

Originally Posted by Skybird

I know, I actually came to that conclusion myself when I was 15 years old. I think a future step will be the colonization of Moon and Mars through semi intelligent robots and possibly technobiological plant/animal life. It's a logical continuation of what he have been doing during our previous existance as a human race. And I think it is happening in many places in the universe.

That is all speculation, including the theory of astronomers I referred to. I am always hesitant to label something as a conclusion when all I have is speculation only. It is a mind experiment. Coclusion I reserve for theories which base on some former information and finding offering some more substance. Making conclusions on the basis of speculations alone necessarily leads not to conclusions but - more speculation.

Seeing the problem we are discussing, I agree. But the past showed we cannot stop these processes, because they are larger than the single individual, and they have a life of themselves.

that is exactly the uncritical, almost fatalistic acceptance of technology I mentioned. Technology (forming by scientific developement)in human history was a trend starting slow in Western medival, today has amost a selfÄ_dynamic keeping it running. In the orient it had a better start, but then came to an almost complete halt and stagnation. So, technology does not necessarily have a life of its own. Also, it is a two-split thing. Decisions leading us to planes, we consider to be good. Planes crowding the sky and polluting the atmosphere in altitudes where they really do damage, we consider not to be good. So, we cannot say "an airplane all by itself is necessarily a good thing". And always the results of Oppenheimer's project on my mind. And finally, their is business, and this keeps things running. Technological developement not so much is keeping itself alive (and if so, then only via the intermittend variable of science finding answers which hold new questions in themselves), but is getting piushed by business that is demanding new products to make new profits. This is th drive behind scientific and technologcal developement more thna anything else. It may have been different in the past, but today it's the moeny that makes the world go round.

Hey, sure. I am just saying that at the moment the pendulum is swinging back again and technology is in the lead again. We are moving towards artifical intelligence, with small, logical steps. As I said at the start, it scares me, as it could mean the end of humanity as we know it.

It sounds profane, but I do not see it like this when often telling myself: it is like it is.

But I must not like it, and when I do not like it what kind of man would I be if not trying to change it or influence it then?

P.S. In your next holidays, get a copy of Frank Schätzing'S "Der Schwarm", you probably have heared of it, it was a long time bestseller. Notm only is it a very exciting and well-written reading, but it also offers you a conception of an alien intelligence that is totally different to everything we have discussed here. And not refering to the book, but to natural fish swarms, and the behavior of humans moving in big groups without colliding, but nevertheless forming movements patterns that you can see from the outside: that is a form of intelligence too, agree most solcial and natural scientists, calling it "swarm intelligence". Now comlpare that to a PC network intelligence. The difference should be obvious beyond that swarms are not hardwired, and are not connected in PC networks. It's two totally different things.