Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site pyuxd.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!pyuxww!pyuxd!rlr From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) Newsgroups: net.philosophy Subject: Re: More Atheistic Wishful Thinking Message-ID: <1623@pyuxd.UUCP> Date: Fri, 30-Aug-85 13:26:22 EDT Article-I.D.: pyuxd.1623 Posted: Fri Aug 30 13:26:22 1985 Date-Received: Sat, 31-Aug-85 08:46:02 EDT References: <1379@umcp-cs.UUCP> <1598@pyuxd.UUCP> <1432@umcp-cs.UUCP> Organization: Whatever we're calling ourselves this week Lines: 125 >>>Wishful thinking: it's like saying that a robot chess player is "just a >>>bunch of ICs". The huge volume of stories concerning the transmission >>>of minds from one body to another indicates that people do not really >>>believe that a mind is a bunch of chemicals any more than they believe >>>that a chess program is a bunch of ICs (or take the reduction to an even >>>more absurd level, a bunch of electrical charges). [WINGATE] >>I wasn't aware that science fiction stories of varying quality can now >>join the Bible on the list of "books that tell the truth about the universe". >>What people do or do not want to "really believe" is irrelevant. This >>huge volume of stories is fictional, Charles. But you've missed the whole >>point. Most people I know DO think a chess playing program is "just a >>bunch of circuits", and thus unable to "think" (or whatever), while on >>the other hand claiming "But WE aren't just a bunch of chemicals and stuff; >>We're human!!! We're different!!!" Do you know what hexasyllabical word >>describes that? (Hint: it's not "hexasyllabical", and it begins with >>"anthropo-" and ends with "-centrism" ...) > Bullshit, Rich. Utter bullshit. Bullshit, my ass. This hits it right on the money, my friend. Are you denying that many people think of so-called "thinking machines" as "just a bunch of circuits" while saying "but we're not, we're human, we're different"? That most assuredly is anthropocentrism plain and simple. > A chess playing robot with an accounting program in it doesn't play chess, > does it? A brain-dead human doesn't think, does it? A dog is obviously > unlike a human isn't it? To say that men are "just chemicals" is nothing > more than a cop-out. No, Charles, it is YOU who is copping out. If we are more than a bunch of chemicals then, in the same way, the chess program is more than a bunch of circuits. In exactly the same way. In the nature of their organizations. Yet some people claim "that's just a bunch of circuits, not a thing engaging in real 'thinking', and they never will build such a thinking machine, because we glorious humans are innately different". You denied that people do this, but clearly they do. Even some scholars of AI have (erroneously) come to believe this. And their motivation for doing so is their fear that building a machine that models human thought will take away the difference that we perceive ourselves (erroneously) to have. > Whether or not transmission of minds around is possible > is quite irrelevant; the fact that people will talk about it, even in the > realm of fiction, indicates that it can be conceptualized. My dear Charles, YOU are the one who brought up the example you now call irrelevant. A lot of things can be conceptualized. A lot of things that do not or can not exist. So? > If we're just chemicals, then obviously a dead person is qualitatively > identical to the same person alive. After all, we can just ignore all that > organization, those memories and thoughts, the consciousness, the emotions-- > none of them are chemicals, so they must not matter. How you get from my statements to here is beyond me. (Wishful thinking that this MUST be the conclusion of my beliefs, in order that you can feel justified in not "liking" them?) No one said we had to ignore any of that. But to believe that such organization is somehow "special", that it is only possible in us, and that "machines" simply cannot be that way, ever, is anthropocentrism in its purest form. >>> The pejorative phrasing clearly indicates that >>> Padraig would rather have us overlook the absolute importance of the >>> ORGANIZATION of those chemicals. >>I didn't see any pejorative that intimated that at all. On the contrary. > Obviously Rich is the only person in America who doesn't view the phrase > "just a " as a pejorative statement. I'm just a gigolo, and everywhere I go... Obviously Charles is the only one in America who assumes that everyone in America interprets words exactly the same way he does. (Actually, that's not true. It would be more accurate to say Charles is the only one in America who assumes that everyone in America interprets words exactly the same way Charles does.) Why don't you show us exactly what Padraig said that was so "pejorative" rather than a pseudo-quote with a symbolic parameter thrown in. >>> The fact that people can talk seriously >>> about transferring people's minds (and one assumes, the essential person) >>> into computers indicates that, not only can in fact say that a person is >>> NOT just chemicals, but even that the essential nature of a person is >>> immaterial-- since it is information, and not matter or energy. >>Seriously? Oh, I agree that many of those stories are serious in the sense >>that they are speculatively scientific and not wishful thinking fantasy, >>but they are far from "serious" in the sense of being thought of as a >>serious implementation possibility based on what happens in the story. >>Furthermore, most of the stories I've come across are NOT serious, but >>merely a wishywashy fantasy with little bearing on reality and even less >>rigorous basis behind the modeling in the story. It makes for fun reading >>(if you're into it), but not a viable description of reality. > I see. Communications satellites are not real, since they were described > in SF. You need a course in logic, Charles. You fouled that one up so bad, it smells. Where did I say "everything that has ever appeared in SF is not real"? On the contrary, I said that the way certain "mind-transference" stories are told involves pure fantasization rather than speculative thinking, examples of which included space travel and communications satellites in SF of years past. Why are you engaging in such vile verbal chicanery? I'm sure you're intelligent enough to know that that's not what I said at all. Why the need to smear like that? > This whole argument is tantemount to saying that one can play chess by > keeping track of the number of pieces on each side, totally ignoring their > positions. Huh? Care to explain that analogy? If you mean to say we are ignoring organization, we are not. It is you who are denying that similar organizations can be exist in things other than humans or even life-forms as we know them. > If Rich and Padraig are going to persist in this folly, then I > shall (once again) drop out. Their views would then seem to be immune to > reality. I think you're the one who had the reality vaccine. Your brain may have developed antibodies for reality, but fortunately mine hasn't. I'm sure this WILL be the point at which you drop out, because you only re-persist in repeating arguments of yours that people debunk so many times and then quit. -- Anything's possible, but only a few things actually happen. Rich Rosen pyuxd!rlr