brat@c3pe.C3.COM (John Whitten) (09/20/90)
Well, looks like I've been silenced by the WORST kind of censorship... the PROGRAM! :-) Seems that I apparently wrote an article too long and not all of it made it out... if anyone would like to read the exciting conclusion, E-Mail me som e-mail and I'll figure out how to send you a copy of it. (And it was actually beginning to wrap itself up into something that made sense too...) Brat Wizard
brat@c3pe.C3.COM (John Whitten) (09/21/90)
your philosophy, Horatio... Expires: References: <10497@pt.cs.cmu.edu> Sender: Brat Wizard Reply-To: brat@c3pe.C3.COM (John Whitten) Followup-To: Distribution: World Organization: C3 Incorporated, Herndon, VA Honorary member: 'Homo Sapiens R Us' Keywords: Life, AI, Intelligence, BullShit ok, I tried this once, and it didn't work out as planned... one last attempt to post this article in its entirety... if it don't work THIS time <sigh> I suppose you'll just hafta e-mail me a message and I'll personally send it to ya! ------------------------------- Reposted Article --------------------------- To all the folks that have 'e-mailed' me very thoughtful and insightful messages, I have to sit back and think about new data for awhile so I suppose I'm apologizing for not answering my e-mail promptly, but don't stop sending it! I get rather irritated at folks who are so narrow-minded that they cannot even ENTERTAIN the notion that machines might someday in some way become intelligent. Perhaps I'm biased (and if I'm not, perhaps I should be :->) but I think that we are witnessing the dawning of an entirely new life form. My mother is a shrink and she and I have radically opposing views regarding what constitutes life, intelligence and so on. I think she's able to follow me for a bit, and at least HEAR the arguments I'm presenting, but deep inside, she isn't able to come to grips with the fact that she may not be top dog on the intelligence ladder. This sometimes leads to almost violent arguments (the best kind, hehehe). In any case, she maintains that machines can never become 'alive' because they wouldn't have a 'soul'. And if they can't become 'alive', then how could they possibly EVER be considered 'intelligent' ? The question she's asking without realizing it is of course, 'what is a soul ?' Is not a bad question. Having grown up in this great country full of pseudo-christians with quasi-nausi-causes, I feel like I received my fair quota of religious byproducts ('excuse me, my karma just ran over your dogma'). It is my belief that the concept of 'soul' is intertwined with the concept of 'mind'; the non-tangible essence which IS the entity. Now I fully realize I'm opening myself up for heated discussion here but what's the point in safe conversation? Eveyone's going to have their own little pet theory about what the 'soul' is or isn't. The REAL point here is that there seems to be a bit MORE that we're holding back just in case anything [mechanical or otherwise] gets too close... we can whip out this soul thing and say 'AHA! but you haven't got one of THESE!' ... My mother cannot satisfactorily demonstrate to me that SHE IN FACT POSESSES ONE. When pressed to put forward a reasonable argument in support of her soul concept, she's forced to fall back on the faith bit... 'Well, I can't PROVE to you I have a soul of course [you big lug] but I BELEIVE I do [therefore it must be so]'. How do you argue with religion? Souls notwithstanding, there is a lot of latitude in the definition of intelligence (indeed, the discussions in this forum have proven that!).. it would seem that its easier to demonstrate what ISN'T intelligent than to illustrate what IS, AND as soon as the intelligence [validity of the claim] of any entity is challenged, it ceases to be so (at least by supportable evidence). I put forth that anything that is 'alive' could be considered intelligent. One would certainly not mistake a ROCK for an intelligence? What about a bunch of upstart proteins that get together on the weekends to jam to the Ameoba Beat? What if they hit the big time and travel the human circuit...? Same proteins different day. SPDD. There is an 'essence' at work here. Something that trancends the simple working parts to become 'alive'. In order to STAY that way the parts have to work together (even unwittingly) toward common survival. Na