Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!faline!thumper!ulysses!andante!mit-eddie!ll-xn!ames!lll-tis!oodis01!uplherc!sp7040!obie!wsccs!dharvey
From: dharvey@wsccs.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: AIList V6 #86 - Philosophy
Summary: I, a finite state, deterministic automoton replies....
Message-ID: <523@wsccs.UUCP>
Date: 11 May 88 21:41:59 GMT
References: <1579@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <3200016@uiucdcsm>
Lines: 45
Posted: Wed May 11 17:41:59 1988

In article <3200016@uiucdcsm>, channic@uiucdcsm.cs.uiuc.edu writes:
> 
> In his article Brian Yamuchi (yamauchi@speech2.cs.cmu.edu) writes:
> Do you believe your career was merely the result of some bizarre genetic
> combination or pure chance?
> 
People like you need to watch "Being There" at least 10 times.  The fact
that I was born to a lower class family shouldn't have any effect on my
career choice vs. the ones made by young Ron Reagan should it?  And I
can imagine that the poor starving Ethiopians have just as much a chance
of becoming a Computer Scientist as I do.  Chance has much more of an
impact than many want to admit in determining what we do.  I can also
imagine the great fame and glory that I will achieve for a great
scientific discovery since it will happen just because I will it!  Never
mind the fact that my IQ is not even close to Albert Einstein's!  Also,
genetic structure has a very significant impact on how we live our
lives.  Even a casual perusal of the studies of identical twins
separated at birth will produce an uncanny amount of similarities, and
this also includes IQ levels, even when the social environments are
radically different.  You dismiss these factors as if they are
insignificant and trivial. 
>
> The attack is over.  The following is a plea to all AI researchers.  Please
> do not try to persuade anyone, especially impressionable students, that s\he
> does not have free will.  Everyone has the ability to choose to bring peace
> to his or her own life and to the rest of society, and has the ability to
> MAKE A DIFFERENCE in the world.  Free will should not be compromised for the
> mere prospect of creating an intelligent machine.
> 
I am student (perhaps more depressable than impressable) and haven't
noticed anyone persuading me in any way.  A lot have tried to convince
me that I have free will, but for some reason I always get lost in the
quagmire of linguistic semantics which makes the term almost impossible
to define clearly.  You must understand that I have read much of the
works of modern philosophers (Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Berkeley,
Hume, and Kant among them) and the whole issue remains unresolved for
me.  I tend to lean toward the AI perspective, but....

	The only thing you can know for sure is

	   That you can't know anything for sure!  (-:

					dharvey @ wsccs

	Nobody represents me, and I represent Nobody.