Want to be challenged?

[Axlenz-FlashElite]

The evidentialist principle: It is irrational for anyone, anywhere, to believe anything without sufficient evidence.

This means less than 20 percent of United States is evidentialist...

"It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen." --ARISTOTLE (Top philosopher of history.)

Everybody is either:

Materialist: The view that all that exists is matter, configured into material objects. There are no minds or souls or immaterial spirits. Physical matter is all that exists. (Me)

Idealism: Is the view that there are immaterial spirits, perhaps a God, and everything is a creation. (80% probability you)

Here is something interesting:

Materialists believe:

1) The advanced supercomputer is behaviorally just like a human. <<Solid fact.

2) The supercomputer does not have a mind.

3) We don't have minds either.

Idealists must, therefore, believe:

1) The advanced supercomputer is behaviorally just like a human. <<Solid fact.
2) We humans clearly embody minds.
3) The supercomputer must embody a mind as well.

Here is something I want to know whether you would say also:
When I die, I want to be buried in either a quickly biodegradable box, or none at all, because I want to rot fast, because then my molecules can enter the earth, and then enter plants and the animals who feed on those plants, and i will be disbursed, spread around to the point that, ultimately, I'll be blended with the universe, and have a sort of cosmic immortality. (Me agree.)

Now think about that and share your thoughts...

C'mon guys!

[cold-as-hell]

Did you know that 80% of statistics are made on the spot. No joke its true.

And this thing is totally rubbish. What is your point? Your not be specific enough and not directing it at a particular people.

And Im going to donate all my organs and blood. Why? Because these are my organs and blood. And they only have a day to survive outside the human body. So someone will remember me years after I die. And im my will Im going to request that the person who is getting the organs go on the organs doner list for when they die. Its not an order but they will love me for giving them organs to live. So that way I will live for generations to come. My kidnes will see the Mars colonies on TV. And my funeral is a little more spectacular than yours. Im going to get a Viking funeral (set on a very important boat, set out to sea and set on fire) So I will too become one with the universe and all that shit.

Plan done.

[JudgeDredd]

heh. cold-as-hell is living up to his name, but apparently by not having time to read the entire post (..too much rapid-fire posting on every topic).

Obviously this topic is about intelligence, not recycling carbon atoms. God here could also be a mega version supercomputer (like the Matrix Source, but without the limitation of being only 1 vitrual city in constant replay mode).

This topic SO not about recycling atoms, but recycling of thoughts. The embodiment of what it is to be human in a machine form. An A.I. synaptic equivalent of human wetware, or the uploading of enough human memories and ideas to create self-sustaining standalone minds.

So this does raise the question of whether A.I. will predominate in a realistic attempt at robotic simularcum of humans (fully capable learning robots), or will supercomputers housed in underground bunkers control the core robotic software upgrades as the movie A.I. suggests.

Ultimately, will human-level robotic or computer intelligence exist?
Will logic algorithms allow for belief in Self or God?
Will robots have independant thought, or be subject to centralized control?
Will humans reach a point of living vicariously though our man-made machine creations?
More importantly, Will we reach a kind of immortality by doing so?
Or, Will super-minds (minds of a 1000 individuals) become the norm?

And ultimately, Will we create a system so powerful that we pray before it because it embodies all the wisdom and attributes of countless generations of long-since-dead scholars?

Great topic starter! ...*hat off to Axlenz* :O)

[JudgeDredd]

At 12/22/06 12:16 AM, I7REI7I7 wrote: as the movie A.I. suggests.

oops.. yeah, i meant I-robot.

>O(

[Oblivia]

I will like to speak my opinion on robotics and idealism.

Personally, we shouldn't create machines that are more dominant than the human to where they master themselves. A engine is a engine regardless of how many stores of memory it has, it would not work with the co-existance of humans and machinery of independent minds. Otherwise we might get the Termenator Effect where the machines will try to enslave us because we are not efficient to exist and refer to us as viruses.

Though, there is one exception that I will accept. Using mechanical intruments in substitute of human organs like a self-powered heart or a pair of cancer resisting lungs. But if the human had his brain which holds his mind were to be destroyed by an outside force or rotted by age is then should considered dead, unless we developed a way to carefully preserve the brain and be able to put the brain in a cybernetic body. If a functioning human brain is in a robot with resemblance to Jango Fett or something else in the matter, I will still consider it as a human.

[Slizor]

Materialist: The view that all that exists is matter, configured into material objects. There are no minds or souls or immaterial spirits. Physical matter is all that exists. (Me)

Do ideas and thoughts exist?

[JudgeDredd]

At 12/22/06 08:33 AM, Slizor wrote:

Materialist: The view that all that exists is matter, configured into material objects. There are no minds or souls or immaterial spirits. Physical matter is all that exists. (Me)

Do ideas and thoughts exist?

Of course they do!

Cogito ergo sum.. "I think, therefore I am". Not, "I am, therefore i think".

Everything man-made exists first as a thought. Some thoughts are fleeting i grant you, but so are some Suns in the cosmic scheme of things.

Asking if thought exists is like asking if light exists. Sure, you need eyes to say for certain that light exists, but only as much as you need nerves to say what you touch exists, and the combination of both to know what you are seeing isn't merely perfect holographic projection.

Likewise, thoughts allow us to feel or see things outside ourselves, including about things that perhaps don't yet exist. The greatest challenge to building A.I. systems today is the computer's inability to see and touch and interact with it's environment, like a baby can. But this doesn't mean a computer without sensors cannot have an understanding or concepts based on what it cannot see. It's just that those concepts would be theoretically based on what it's told exists.

[Togukawa]

At 12/22/06 09:17 AM, I7REI7I7 wrote:

At 12/22/06 08:33 AM, Slizor wrote:

Materialist: The view that all that exists is matter, configured into material objects. There are no minds or souls or immaterial spirits. Physical matter is all that exists. (Me)

Do ideas and thoughts exist?

...

Asking if thought exists is like asking if light exists. Sure, you need eyes to say for certain that light exists, but only as much as you need nerves to say what you touch exists, and the combination of both to know what you are seeing isn't merely perfect holographic projection.

You raise the point yourself. Are thoughts anything more than a projection of synapses in the cortex firing? What is a mind, what's a thought? We can use those words to describe a process in our brain, but I wouldn't say they're real objects.

Likewise, thoughts allow us to feel or see things outside ourselves, including about things that perhaps don't yet exist. The greatest challenge to building A.I. systems today is the computer's inability to see and touch and interact with it's environment, like a baby can. But this doesn't mean a computer without sensors cannot have an understanding or concepts based on what it cannot see. It's just that those concepts would be theoretically based on what it's told exists.

Thinking is a wonderful thing indeed. The human mind never ceases to amaze.

[Slizor]

Cogito ergo sum.. "I think, therefore I am". Not, "I am, therefore i think".

Cogito ergo sum is incorrect. The "I" in "I think" already assumes existance - it already assumes that thoughts are attached to an existance. It should be "There are thoughts" and nothing more.

[Togukawa]

At 12/22/06 10:04 AM, Slizor wrote:

Cogito ergo sum.. "I think, therefore I am". Not, "I am, therefore i think".

Cogito ergo sum is incorrect. The "I" in "I think" already assumes existance - it already assumes that thoughts are attached to an existance. It should be "There are thoughts" and nothing more.

Along the lines of:
Ac proinde haec cognitio, ego cogito, ergo sum, est omnium prima et certissima.

(My translation: And therefore this thinking is the most important and most certain of all things, I think, therefore I am.)

In any case, the phrase is about being certain that you exist. Would it be possible to think, but not exist? But wikipedia can explain it a lot better :)

[JudgeDredd]

At 12/22/06 10:32 AM, Togukawa wrote: In any case, the phrase is about being certain that you exist.

And would a computer have any less doubt that it exists? Or would it view with inferiority that existance with our "flesh-and-blood" version? Or superiority, in that it could be reconstructed from it's component parts, including it's "brain" which could be stored, then transfered or transmitted to it's new self.

Which in turn leads to the question; how much of our brain (it's workings as well as thoughts and memories) would need to be stored and transfered to reconstitute self?

[cold-as-hell]

At 12/22/06 12:16 AM, I7REI7I7 wrote: heh. cold-as-hell is living up to his name, but apparently by not having time to read the entire post (..too much rapid-fire posting on every topic).

Too fucking right!

[BeProf]

At 12/21/06 09:31 PM, Axlenz wrote: The evidentialist principle: It is irrational for anyone, anywhere, to believe anything without sufficient evidence.

Thus saith the man who provides to sources to back up his "evidence".

[Axlenz-FlashElite]

At 12/22/06 08:33 AM, Slizor wrote:

Materialist: The view that all that exists is matter, configured into material objects. There are no minds or souls or immaterial spirits. Physical matter is all that exists. (Me)

Do ideas and thoughts exist?

They are all electronic messages in our brains...

[JudgeDredd]

At 12/22/06 01:18 PM, Axlenz wrote: They are all electronic messages in our brains...

I think the idea of being able to transmit the electronic equivalent of the contents of your brain and personality, say out into deep space, has considerable merit for mankind. For sub-lightspeed travel to distant star systems there would be nothing simpler than not needing to take your body along with you.

Of course, at the other end you'd need a body to be generated using cloned stem-cells or advanced robotics, but it would give us the potential of existing in 2 places at once, or the "immortality" of being out sent out into the cosmos, which is far and beyond the endurance that recylcling mere carbon atoms would achieve.

[Goldensheep]

At 12/21/06 09:31 PM, Axlenz wrote: The evidentialist principle: It is irrational for anyone, anywhere, to believe anything without sufficient evidence.

This means less than 20 percent of United States is evidentialist...

Prove it, or I don't believe you. I like this "evidencialism".

"It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen." --ARISTOTLE (Top philosopher of history.)

"For there is one thing we must never forget… the majority can never replace the man." - ADOLF HITLER (Top person of history)

Just because some people say it, doesn't make it true. There's always a counter-quote, and unless you quote, say, a sociologist, there is no authority to your quote.

Materialist: The view that all that exists is matter, configured into material objects. There are no minds or souls or immaterial spirits. Physical matter is all that exists. (Me)

But are you a realist or a non-realist?

Idealism: Is the view that there are immaterial spirits, perhaps a God, and everything is a creation. (80% probability you)

Idealism is different from Berkely's Idealism and Phenomenalism

Idealists must, therefore, believe:

1) The advanced supercomputer is behaviorally just like a human.

Even if your argument is right, it is based on a flawed premise - very few people believe you could make a computer like this.

I'll be blended with the universe, and have a sort of cosmic immortality.

Well, if you're a evidencialist, why do you even suspect the universe exists?