peru@soleil.UUCP (Dave Peru) (11/17/88)
Okay, I'm wrong. Human beings can be described like a "food processor". I still think infinity is a big concept. I mean really big. Do you really understand what I am saying? As far as particle physics is concerned, it's turtles all the way down. Obviously people are too emotional about my ideas to be objective. For all of you that sent me hate mail, I found your racial and ethnic bigotry to be quite humorous. I am of Anglo-Saxon European origin, the name is just a label. My great great grandfather changed it long ago. Fine, it's been discussed to death, it's not worth talking about. Consider this argument over, you all won. I am mistaken in my views. Human beings are simply self-replicating "food processors".
geb@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU (Gordon E. Banks) (11/18/88)
In article <493@soleil.UUCP> peru@soleil.UUCP (Dave Peru) writes: > >Obviously people are too emotional about my ideas to be objective. > >Fine, it's been discussed to death, it's not worth talking about. > >Consider this argument over, you all won. I am mistaken in my views. > >Human beings are simply self-replicating "food processors". I didn't see much emotion in the postings. I'm sorry if you got hate mail. I didn't see what would occassion that in your posting. I was a bit puzzled that you only seemed to want to argue about things like the concept of infinity and seemed to refuse to argue about whether humans were machines or not, a far more interesting question. Is this because of some religious committment that you would rather not have exposed to argumentation and possible ridicule on the net?
jsb@actnyc.UUCP (The Invisible Man) (11/19/88)
In article <493@soleil.UUCP> peru@soleil.UUCP (Dave Peru) writes:
)I still think infinity is a big concept. I mean really big.
You want to talk about a really big concept but you let a finitely small
amount of flamage disuade you.
)Obviously people are too emotional about my ideas to be objective.
Don't be so quick to condemn emotionality. It is a bigger concept than
infinity.
)
)For all of you that sent me hate mail, I found your racial and ethnic
As zero equals infinity, hate mail is equal to love mail.
)
)Human beings are simply self-replicating "food processors".
Speak for yourself.
Some humans are just biological Turing machines. Others aren't.
Those who are machines are the ones that know they are. Their machine
nature prevents them from detecting the other, non-machine kind of human.
--
"My *OTHER* newssite is a public access Unix system."
jim (uunet!actnyc!jsb)gf@dasys1.UUCP (G Fitch) (11/19/88)
In article <493@soleil.UUCP> peru@soleil.UUCP (Dave Peru) writes: }... }Obviously people are too emotional about my ideas to be objective. } }For all of you that sent me hate mail, I found your racial and ethnic }bigotry to be quite humorous. ... This is pretty disturbing, actually. We have people reading this newsgroup who feel compelled to write racist hate mail to a poster who annoys them? I wonder how much of it there is. Maybe Dave Peru should publish some of it. (The id's can be left off for the benefit of those who feel delicate about publishing mail.) I hope Dave Peru continues to post, since his views are so stimulating to so many people (every article in t.philosophy.misc today is related to one of his). Those who feel too excited by his writings can always put his id in their kill files. -- G Fitch ...!uunet\ The Big Electric Cat { harvard,philabs }!cmcl2!cucard!dasys1!gf New York City, NY, USA (212) 879-9031 ...!sun!hoptoad/
linhart@topaz.rutgers.edu (Phil) (11/21/88)
The peru@soleil.UUCP (Dave Peru) writes: -=> I still think infinity is a big concept. I mean really big. >FRIEND COMPUTER, WHAT IS THE OUTSIDE? "What is your security clearance, Citizen?" >>RED, FRIEND COMPUTER. "The Outside is big. Really Big. You may think it's a long walk down to the red level cafeteria, but that's just peanuts compared to the Outside. Also, there's no ceiling." >THANK YOU, FRIEND COMPUTER "At your service." -=> zero = infinity The Computer speaks! "Attention! Attention! 1 - 1 = 2.1474836 e + 09. Please recalibrate your instruments accordingly." -=> Human beings are simply self-replicating "food processors". And Dave is our Bouncy Bubble Beverage dispenser. I hope we never lose him. Phil-R-UPP-1 "Citizen, are you having fun yet?"
smryan@garth.UUCP (Steven Ryan) (11/22/88)
>Some humans are just biological Turing machines. Others aren't. >Those who are machines are the ones that know they are. Their machine >nature prevents them from detecting the other, non-machine kind of human. An amusing idea: Currently the only known way to prove nothing will pass the Turing test is to try all possible machines. In other words, it appears to be a partial recursive predicate. Now once a machine gets trapped in partial recursive predicate, it's trapped for infinity, so you couldn't expect a machine to prove nothing will pass the Turing test in finite time. Now if humans can't devise a finite proof.......... -- -- s m ryan +---------------------------------------------------------------+--------------+ | And they looked across the PDP7 and saw that it was idle and | OSF is the | | without users. They `said let there be code' and it was. | antiUnix. | +---------------------------------------------------------------+--------------+ There was a read and a write and it was the first memory cycle.
throopw@xyzzy.UUCP (Wayne A. Throop) (11/24/88)
> peru@soleil.UUCP (Dave Peru) > [...] > Consider this argument over, you all won. I am mistaken in my views. [...] > Obviously people are too emotional about my ideas to be objective. [...] > Human beings are simply self-replicating "food processors". Despite the argument being "over", there are interesting things to note about the statements Dave makes here. First, I don't find most people too emotional to discuss it, especially on the "materialist" or "mechanist" side of things. Quite the reverse. I suspect that what Dave perceives as "emotional" reaction to the content is instead irritation at the style. In particular, the lack of supporting substance to Dave's presentation of his position, which comes across as a series of assertions without acompanying support. (And, in this particular case, irritation at the seeming lack of familiarity with the long history of debate on Lucas-style arguments against AI.) Second, it is amazing how non-materialists or non-mechanists regularly throw in diminuitive adjectives when discussing mechanical notions of intelligence. "Mere" machines. "Simply" self-replicating food-processors. "Only" particles banging together. It seems impossible to make them realize that the "usual" mechanist position is not that machines are "mere", and humans are machines, and that therefore humans are "mere". Rather, it is that humans are machines, humans are NOT "mere", and therefore MACHINES are not necessarily "mere", or "simple" or "only". The continued juxtaposition of "mere" or "simple" and other diminuitives with any mechanist-sounding analogy is simply an emotional ploy, designed to play to the general (and I think mistaken) notion that machines are simple, limited things. This "argument from ridicule" is essentially a mutated form of the "argument from blatant assertion", where the blatant assertion is, in fact, the desired conclusion of the non-mechanist: that machines are just too simple to support complex human-equivalent behavior. -- Just because you wind up naked doesn't make you an emperor. --- Padlipsky -- Wayne Throop <the-known-world>!mcnc!rti!xyzzy!throopw