100% spot on.

I'm not nitpicking. What is the major difference between a human and a machine that mimics humans?

That is the whole point of the Turing test. You don't have to agree that a Turing test is a useful or meaningful test, but I think it is a fairly reasonable place to start, and it is not a stretch or a fallacy or slippery slope at all to think that computers will continue to improve in ways that will allow them to pass ever more sophisticated Turing tests.

If you went back 60 years and asked people what a Turing test would look like, it seems almost certain that an app on any smart phone could pass it. As we become more sophisticated about what intelligence really is, and as computers get closer to the mark, perhaps we see the little gab between the two in starker contrast. But that doesn't mean that computer intelligence (AI) is on the other side of some insurmountable gulf, requires some technology which we don't have any inkling of today, or anything like that.

The bulk of what I'm saying is "I think it is possible," but I think the entirety of the other side is just "I don't think it is possible" -- but the way I see it, the simple argument, thin as it is, that computers will continue to get better, and thus continue to get better at becoming like humans, is sound, and stands unrefuted.

How come we only get fifty years to make a data, why not thousands or millions.

Hmmm, that met several of the ways I predicted in which you would completely fail to back up your claims.

Let's face it Zit, you can't back them up. You have no real understanding of how AI works and cannot show why the concept is "utterly ridiculous". You can't show why Daniel Dennet is a 'nutcase'. All you can do is bluster, evade and insult.

Perhaps you can explain why the concept is 'ridiculous' then? Zit never will, because he can't, so perhaps you can take up the cause? Heck, if you do enough Googling, you would probably be able to run some complete BS past me and I'd never know it, but you could at least make the effort.

If that's another way to describe the dictionary definition of the word 'think', then yes, it's utter bollocks, worthless technobabble. Stupid dictionaries....

As I already said in the part of my post that you quoted, it's virtually zero, certainly not enough to have a knowledgeable conversation about AI. Is that relevant? I'm not taking a contrary position here, simply asking Zit to explain his viewpoint.

"As someone who recognises their complete lack of qualifications/experience/knowledge on this subject"

lol, that's a nicely constructed strawman, and I'm not sure why you're defending Zit so staunchly but there's no point, I can't answer that and I freely admit it, but then I'm not the one making the positive claims, the burden of proof isn't on me. I want Zit to demonstrate how it's 'ridiculous', and you should too if you were being objective. I await your reply with bated breath, but I have to admit, George Bernard Shaw keeps popping into my mind, and I may not pursue this much longer.

Fact is, neither you, me or Zit are qualified or knowledgeable enough to have this conversation usefully, but I'm the only one who seems to recognise that. Well named quoted an essay by Dennet, someone who Zit thinks is a 'nutcase', I'm not sure why you think he supports your viewpoint in this. He's having a conversation at a few levels above where we are.

Be kind of funny if the universe turned out to be a computer program and we were conscious computers taking about if computers could be conscious.

Actually I can, and actually I've taken graduate level courses in AI.
So you are 100% wrong yet again.

But, I choose not to respond any further to your childish drivel, because
you are a windbag. Got it?

Continuation of answer to Original Position.

I was going to continue with sentience after my attempt to picture the etheric body as above but see too much duplicity within this forum and so I'll offer a much better presentation which spares me the effort and so I'll pass.

"The Answers of Spiritual Science to the Big Questions of Existence"

http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA0...Que_index.html

"The Human Soul and the Animal Soul;
The Human Spirit and the Animal Spirit"

http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/19101110p01.html

Quite willing to answer any questions; the above is the best .

Thanks for the replies carlo.

Passing the Turing Test doesn't prove consciousness. Of course that even goes for human beings.

Then stop saying it and actually do it. Explain why the concept is "utterly ridiculous" and why Daniel Dennet is a "nutcase". (Although the latter will require some kind of knowledge of Psychology and/or Psychiatry too I suppose. You are proving to be a huge liar or an impressively qualified individual.)

You have a golden opportunity to demonstrate superior knowledge here and yet, for some reason, you're just falling back on insults and evasions again. I have no reason to believe anything you've said so far, so give me one.


Best self-contradictory statement yet.

"Then stop saying it and actually do it. "

Why? Because some pretentious internet blowhard is demanding me to?
Nah.

Or because you can't......? It's irrelevant who's asking, your continued lack of proof is making your claims look weak and unsubstantiated, almost blowhardish If I don't get anything in your next post, I'm done even giving you the benefit of the doubt that you might actually know something about this and that you're just trolling me. I'll be left with 'just trolling me'.

This 'I ask you for proof, then you insult me and don't give any proof' routine is boring and unproductive. I thought you were capable of better. Not sure why.

*I'm* trolling *you* ? That's hilarious. Do you have any self awareness
at all?

I created this thread to elicit and facilitate discussion, and the discussion was going on fine until you came in, trolling - making demands on me, who the hell do you think you are anyway?

Ok, you can't do it, now I'm certain that there's no point asking any more. You're just so much hot air, opinion and conjecture with nothing to back it up. I give up and this is my last post.

I thought you might actually demonstrate some knowledge, god knows you had the excuse and the opportunity to put me firmly in my place, but all you're doing is being personal, evading perfectly reasonable questions, insulting me and generally being thoroughly unpleasant, and that's pretty tedious. I never get anything at all from swapping posts with you except this unpleasantness so you just made my ignore list, permanently, and that takes some doing, believe me.

Good riddance.

I never expected to experience a time where I would side with festeringZit. I dont know if its a good or bad thing :S

It's possible in a holographic universe, even The Course In Miracles states this concept.

7 posts and you mention this "book" twice...

So, do you think we should all buy "The course in miracles" written by Helen Schucman?

I hope everyone understood this.

We should all buy "The course in miracles" written by Helen Schucman

That clear now?

Also look up Kenneth Warpig, if you like to spend weekends with idiots and being scammed.

Holograms are real enough to talk about. Same with illusions and consciousness.

Deciding the actual qualities of an illusion is a way more important step than deciding if consciousness is one.

So in a way this whole topic has the wagon in front of the horse by assuming a presupposition of an illusion without a clarification of what an illusion actually is.

It is something not real which appears to be and it is is also something which appears to be one thing but is another.

Is 'this' an illusion of 'that' if I switch the "i" and "a" around when no one is looking? No, this becomes that and that becomes this.
The illusion is an assumption of an illusion in this case.


A disguise is an illusion as much as is a trick of sleight of hand which makes a card magically appear behind a person's ear.

Anyway, an illusion is not always such a neat and tidy thing to consider. Especially when a person is faced with a proposition like that they are living one.


Right now, I cannot think of a more tricky and full of consideration a combination of words than consciousness and illusion.

An ethics of consciousness?

http://bigthink.com/21st-century-spi...consciousness?

If a child could survive the massive defects of being born with either nothing but their brain, or perhaps no connection between the brain and the spine (whatever condition that would result in no sensory input to the brain), could that brain ever develop consciousness?


PS Notwithstanding the benefits that will come from future AI research, we'll never actually know if 'machines' have developed consciousness (vs. mimicking it) without solving the philosophical problem of solipsism.
Turing Test - Shmuring Test

Seems good to me.

So is a con an illusion?

It isn't often I agree with you FesteringZit, but I do now.

Calling consciousness an illusory simulation of the brain resolves nothing, it's like saying a rock is a physical representation of stone. It's the Erasmus school of intellectualism.

Yeah, this.

Here's the thing: this is an entirely unhelpful to communicate a neuroscientific understanding of consciousness to the public. It's perfectly reasonable to say that our sense of a centralised 'self' or consciousness is, in fact, a model of our various models. But this isn't what anyone thinks of when they hear 'illusion'. And furthermore, if consciousness being a model means it is an illusion, then our sense of vision is also an illusion; the contingent representation of the interaction of photons on our retinas is NOT what the world actually is. "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" and all that.