Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!uwvax!oddjob!mimsy!aplcen!jhunix!ins_atge
From: ins_atge@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU (Thomas G Edwards)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Re: The future of AI
Summary: Its all physical and Choatic
Message-ID: <6626@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU>
Date: 2 Jul 88 21:32:24 GMT
References: <712@inria.UUCP>
Reply-To: ins_atge@jhunix.UUCP (Thomas G Edwards)
Organization: Johns Hopkins Univ. Computing Ctr.
Lines: 39

In article <712@inria.UUCP> joe@inria.UUCP (Joe arceneaux ) writes:
>  
>  That is, your choice consists of neurons firing in a particular pattern. And,
>  if somehow, microseconds before the vote, we had the sum total of your
>  knowledge and experience available to us, we could predict exactly how you
>  would vote. You could have voted in no other way besides that dictated to you
>  by your knowledge and experience and the underlying mechanisms.
>
>I suspect rather strongly that people of Werner Heisenberg's ilk would
>disagree with you here.  Remember that Einstein *never did* show that
>"God doesn't play dice with the universe."

   I doubt quantum uncertainty has much effect on unpredictability of
the human mind.  Chaos, however, does.  Each neuron is a non-linear
unit, and we have 10^10 to 10^11 of them, which makes the situation
so Chaotic that long term predictions (more than a half a second) would
be unfeasable.
   But, the fact remains your hand touched the lever of your candidate.
Your hand was positioned by nerves extending back to your brain.
Your brain outputed nerve impulses to your hand.  Those impulses cam
from neurons excited by other neurons' impulses, ad almost infinitum.


>  Science asserts the exact opposite: That everything can be explained, that
>  everything can be modelled, and that the way to gain knowledge is to seek
>  these explanations and models.
>
>Whether it is indeed true that everything can be explained is another
>question and once again in the philosopher's ballpark.
  
    It always seemed to me that science examined evidence, and
based on that evidence cam up with ways of organizing information
and making predictions.  Chaos, interestingly enough, says that although
you can make micro-level predictions, and it predicts that macro-level
predictions of large non-linear systems is very difficult, but that
all non-linear systems have certain universal characteristics.

-Thomas G. Edwards
 ins_atge@jhuvms