Quote:
Originally Posted by masque de Z
I dont get the p-zombie thing either. For me it is possible that a machine can exist that doesnt feel pain like we do but represents it -understands its neurological origin- in a way that fits what we do with it when we feel it. That being can exist and is not inconsistent but it doesnt defeat physicalism. In my view one can have both a replication of a human brain that feels pain and a mathematical simulation of it that represents it in some symbol/parameter and applies it to the influence it has on the system the same way a real feeling does to a human.
Consider
life-logging and
Machine learning. There is an awful lot of data about people on the internet, plus with life-logging techniques like 24x7 personal cameras, and health monitoring equipment., phone recording, camera monitoring etc. It is possible to collect a massive amount of data on someone, and this is getting easier and easier.
Now for an individual what you need to do is catalogue all the decisions on record, and associated situational data. Pick 80% of the decisions made and use a machine learning process like
neural nets to predict the decisions from the data. Test the machine on the reaming 20% of the decisions to see how well it does. Improve and iterate.
At the moment such a machine will not be all that stunning. However both life-logging methods and machine learning methods are rapidly improving. So the picture of the future painted in the TV series
Caprica is very plausible. In it a teenage girl, Zoe, writes a scripts that downloads all the information on someone from the internet
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zoe Graystone Aavatar
information from medical scans, DNA profiles, psychological evaluations, school records, emails, video and audio recordings, CAT scans, genetic typing, synaptic records, security cameras, test results, shopping records, talent shows, ballgames, traffic tickets, restaurant bills, phone records, music lists, movie tickets, TV shows and "even prescriptions for birth control" - essentially turning raw data into personality and memory
and builds a machine that appears almost identical to the original Zoe, which was useful as Zoe then promptly died. Zoe's father then marketed this process to help with grief guidance. Create a copy of a lost loved one!
Last edited by Piers; 11-07-2014 at 07:46 AM.