brat@c3pe.c3.com (John Whitten) (09/19/90)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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'm also choosing to answer it publicly via this article...
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.
Nature entrophies. That which is alive defies entrophy. Intelligence is simply
a mechanism used to stay alive longer. By this point you've probably already
decided that I'm off my rocker and am certainly abusing the classical sense o