[extropy-chat] Qualia Bet

[John K Clark]

"Technotranscendence" <neptune at superlink.net>

> Einstein had pants, hair, respiration, a degree, and the ability to speak
> German -- all things rocks lack.

If you SINCERELY thought that the ability wear pants was what I meant by
intelligence then yes, that does tell me a lot about intelligence, not about
Einstein's intelligence but about somebody's.

 >  Eventually, you're going to have to do a little better than just
> list examples

I don't see why.

>  and you'll have the "moral equivalent" of a definition.

Most people don't have a dictionary in their house and haven't even looked
at one since their fourth grade teacher made them, and if asked to explain
something they would most likely point to something else and say
"like that". If you held their feet to the fire and insisted on a definition
of just about anything the result would be so full of holes as to be
almost laughable; and yet these people could pass the Turing Test with
flying colors, and many of them you would personally admire for their
considerable brainpower. I believe that is one reason early AI programs
were so brittle and unsatisfactory, they were based not on examples but
on a long list of rigid rules and definitions.

And by the way, where do think the dictionary makers got the information to
write their definitions?

    John K Clark