Xref: utzoo comp.ai:8306 sci.bio:4218 sci.psychology:3952 alt.cyberpunk:5460 Newsgroups: comp.ai,sci.bio,sci.psychology,alt.cyberpunk Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watcgl!jwtlai From: jwtlai@watcgl.waterloo.edu (Jim W Lai) Subject: Re: The Bandwidth of the Brain Message-ID: <1990Dec28.230052.7984@watcgl.waterloo.edu> Organization: University of Waterloo References: <1990Dec22.213121.12226@dsd.es.com> <1990Dec24.202254.2832@ddsw1.MCS.COM> Date: Fri, 28 Dec 90 23:00:52 GMT Lines: 32 In article cho@fladrif.entmoot.cs.psu.edu (Sehyeong Cho) writes: >In article magi@polaris.utu.fi >(Marko Gronroos) writes: >> Why do you say that we can't understand our thinking? >> It's quite true that a pocket calculator (pc) can't understand it's >>"thinking", but then, a pocket calculator doesn't THINK, it doesn't >>LEARN, It doesn't make INTELLIGENT CONCLUSIONS. I don't think that we >>can make a "law of not understanding oneself", if we have only one >>example of beings who really can't understand ANY of their functional >>principles (computers). > >Hmmm. Dogs are quite intelligent. They think. They learn. >Now, will it be possible for dogs to understand their thinking mechanism? >Who knows? But my beliefs of this is of 0.1E-100000000 certainty. :-) >If you agree with me (dogs will probably not ..) you must think that >human intelligence is something which is ULTIMATE. >I.e., you must believe if there are any other beings more intelligent than >humans, the difference should be only marginal. Right? > >I don't think so. There are things which humans would probably not understand >forever. The question that remains unresolved is whether or not the human level of intelligence is sufficient to allow self-understanding (self-modelling?). For this, we must turn to experimental evidence, of which there is none. It is not required that human intelligence be the ultimate achievable, nor that humans be able to understand all forms of intelligence. So, can anyone give a reason why they think this is impossible, other than personal philosophical grounds? Strictly scientifically, one should defer judgement.