Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!lll-winken!uunet!world!burley From: burley@world.std.com (James C Burley) Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy Subject: Re: emergent properties Message-ID: Date: 5 Oct 90 06:49:25 GMT References: <3499@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> <1990Oct3.183522.17076@riacs.edu> <3549@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> <45348@apple.Apple.COM> <3560@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> <14517@hydra.gatech.EDU> <3565@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> Sender: burley@world.std.com (James C Burley) Organization: The World Lines: 25 In-Reply-To: minsky@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU's message of 4 Oct 90 05:23:31 GMT In article <3565@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> minsky@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU (Marvin Minsky) writes: So I wasn't saying what to do, only suggesting that you look more thoughtfully at what may already be telling "you" what to do. Don't let your mind kick you around. Assuming certain popluar scientific models of the mortal human brain are valid, would another way to phrase the last sentence be "Don't let your lizard-brain tell kick your chicken-brain around, and don't let your chicken-brain kick your human-brain around."? I'm trying to get a handle on what you mean by not letting your mind kick you around -- I mean I THINK I understand what you mean (to whatever extent I may be said to think), but it is likely I'm mistaken. (And we do still have the problem of trying to determine what part(s) of the brain are "right" about anything: if we are all machines, why are human machines and their correlative extra brainage in any way more useful or valuable than mammals, reptiles, or even krill, plankton, algae...? We're certainly not more numerous, and show no signs of outlasting most of the other species. Put another way: if we let our baser drives take over, spent less time pounding on keyboards, driving cars, and wasting the planet's resources, and instead pursued simple food, drink, and procreation to pretty much the exclusion of all else, and did this on a mammoth (say 5 billion!) scale, would we last longer as a species? Yet is length of species existence even important? Ah well.) James Craig Burley, Software Craftsperson burley@world.std.com