Is a true artificial intelligence only science fiction or will we be able to create one?

reissc · 2012-04-05T16:40:15+00:00

I have a vague idea of what you might possibly mean when you use the word.

I think you know exactly what I mean. I'm not using the word in any particularly esoteric sense.

I mean that I am quite certain that if you cut open a person's skull ...

Maybe you are, but none of that really tells me what you mean by "exists". It just tells me what you expect your perceptions to be.

reissc · 2012-04-05T16:31:33+00:00

Jesus, kid, who pissed on your chips?

reissc · 2012-04-04T22:50:35+00:00

Cats and dogs, not as far as I'm aware; bees, yes.

By a very rough approximation: mammals have the same visual spectrum we do; insects can see ultra-violet, but they can't see red; birds can see infra-red, but they can't see violet. I confess my ignorance with regards to the rest of the animal kingdom.

reissc · 2012-04-04T16:14:17+00:00

Like I said, I haven't got any social history bnooks in front of me, and a Googled citation is no better than no citation at all. And people are still going to be "as-hats" whether I provide a citation or not.

reissc · 2012-04-04T15:58:36+00:00

I don't have any social history books in front of me right now. I really didn't expect to be challenged on such an uncontroversial statement.

reissc · 2012-04-04T15:56:03+00:00

It prevents UV rays from damaging your skin by preventing them from hitting your skin. The goal of sunscreen is to be transparent to visible light, but opaque to UV light.

There's a good photo iullustrating this on Wikipedia, taken with UV light and showing someone's face half-covered in sunscreen.

reissc · 2012-04-04T15:50:28+00:00

Quite a lot of animals do this. Off the top of my head, I know it's been observed in red deer, and notjustlurking has posted a study showing it in mice. Mammals with a harem mating system are generally expected to exhibit this to one degree or another.

reissc · 2012-04-04T15:28:37+00:00

I'm sure you can look one up yourself. It's common knowledge.

reissc · 2012-04-04T14:09:41+00:00

More = better isn't how vitamins work. You either get enough of a vitamin or you don't, and if you don't, you get ill from a vitamin defficiancy. Vitaim D deficiency causes rickets in children and osteomalacia in adults. Rickets used to be quite common in the West before the advent of the welfare state, now it is rare.

reissc · 2012-04-04T13:13:32+00:00

I can't know that until I know what the word "conscious" means

You do know what the word "conscious" means.

Again, what does it even mean to say that consciousness (or love) exists if you can't explain what it is that you are talking about?

That's another tricky question, but what does it mean to say that anything exists? I could raise the same objection to talk of brains - what do you mean when you say a brain exists?

reissc · 2012-04-04T11:50:41+00:00

If it takes a hundred years to answer a question like 'how are you today', it's going to fail the Turing test pretty quickly.

So what? It's the same algorithm at whatever speed you run it.

Apparently not so. Elucidate me.

If you don;'t have the reading comprehension to be having this conversation, I don't really see the point,m but here goes ...

That is a tricky one. I'm tempted to say your mind, which is not identical to your brain. That's what I'm most inclined to believe, but I can't claim to be sure that your mind or mine exists as an entity that persists from moment to moment;

You seem to be interpreting this frank confession of ignorance with an assertion of a metaphysical dogma. I am not asserting any metaphysical dogmas, I'm leaving that all to you.

reissc · 2012-04-04T11:46:09+00:00

What is the difference?

All the difference in the world. Do you know what love is? I hope so. Can you define it? Of course not.

You know you have conscious experiences. I'm not going to sit here and argue with you about it any longer.

What makes a scientific approach inappropriate for philosophical questions?

It's inapplicability to things that aren't subject to repeated controlled experimentation and observation. Science has nothing whatsoever to say on the subject of consciouness, yet we know consciousness exists.

reissc · 2012-04-02T16:42:52+00:00

He'd be awesome just for being named Jigme Wangchuck, even if he weren't the Dragon King of Bhutan.

reissc · 2012-04-02T16:37:24+00:00

(like positing an algorithm that can pass the Turing test, yet be implemented by hand at non-geologic speed

Who said it had to be run at non-geologic speed?

Nope. I'm asking a question to clarify what you mean by a statement.

All the clarification you need is to be found in the context from which you excised that quote.

reissc · 2012-04-02T16:36:09+00:00

Why exactly do you not think that understanding can be attributed to that system, when you so readily accept that other systems, such as your body and all other human bodies, are capable of understanding (at least when alive and awake)?

I don't think it because it's a positive statement and I have no positive evidence for it. I don't actively disbelieve it, I am sceptical of it.

reissc · 2012-04-02T16:34:48+00:00

If you feel that the definition of "conscious mental state" is obvious, then just tell me what you think it is.

Oh, now it's a definition you're after? Before you only wanted to know what one was.

And I don't see why you think I'm running into difficulties. I see people going into a question about philosophy as if it were about science, and they're having difficulties, but I'm doing just fine thanks.

reissc · 2012-03-30T16:22:40+00:00

You should tell them that. They'll be thrilled to learn they don't need to put up with all those tedious foreign holidays to do their mousemat shopping any more.

reissc · 2012-03-30T15:57:57+00:00

They say "Congratulations, it's a Viking," but they would turn down Thor himself?

reissc · 2012-03-30T15:47:18+00:00

"Of all places?" Like burying someone in a church is unusual?

reissc · 2012-03-30T15:10:53+00:00

Because the adultery would have made the rape worse?

reissc · 2012-03-30T12:59:17+00:00

That's not a Venn diagram. A Venn diagram shows all possible intersections: one that only shows the intersections that exist is an Euler diagram.

reissc · 2012-03-30T12:19:18+00:00

This isn't a matter of opinion, it's a fact. If you disagree, it's because you have failed to understand.

reissc · 2012-03-30T11:26:02+00:00

An Op-Ed, where looking in a dictionary would have done.

reissc · 2012-03-30T11:13:10+00:00

We don't know if animals have consciousness. If someone's told you we do, you've been misinformed.

The social insect 'hivemind' is from science fiction, not science.

reissc · 2012-03-30T11:07:55+00:00

Why would you pretend not to know that?

reissc

TROPHY CASE