Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!jarthur!uunet!bony1!richieb
From: richieb@bony1.bony.com (Richard Bielak)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Pseudo-machine
Message-ID: <1991May23.034401.17348@bony1.bony.com>
Date: 23 May 91 03:44:01 GMT
References: <5329@dftsrv.gsfc.nasa.gov> <1991May16.101759.1757@cs.ruu.nl>
Reply-To: richieb@bony1.UUCP (Richard Bielak)
Organization: Bank of New York
Lines: 42

In article <1991May16.101759.1757@cs.ruu.nl> nrasch@cs.ruu.nl (Menno Rasch) writes:
>In <5329@dftsrv.gsfc.nasa.gov> jones@amarna.gsfc.nasa.gov (JONES, THOMAS) writes:
>
>>Several writers have mentioned the idea of putting *all possible* English
>>conversations in memory.  Then the sentences can be retrieved, one by one.
>>The question now arises: Is this entity intelligent?  
>>
>>I claim that we have a pseudo-issue and a pseudo-question.  The reason is
>>that you could convert all of the  matter in the Universe into memory
>>for such a device, without having nearly enough.  Thus the existence of
>>such a device would be radically impossible.
>>
>>Tom
>
>
>
>You are right.... But IF......
>(fhilosophy remember???)

It's worse than that. There are infinitely many utterance in English,
so matter in all Universes would not be sufficient.

:-)

...richie

P.S. I have a much better machine. It can predict the future, by
generating every possible page of text (there are *finitely* many
such things). So for example, one the pages my machine will generate
is the front page of the N.Y. Times on January 1st, 2000.

Anybody want next week's racing results?

;-)



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