[ExI] Meaningless Symbols.

Stefano Vaj stefano.vaj at gmail.com
Mon Jan 11 13:13:38 UTC 2010


2010/1/11 Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com>:
> Yes, we know a lot of this experience is illusory, or at least misleading,
> because a large part of the process of "willing" is literally unconscious
> and precedes awareness, but still one might hope to have a machine that is
> aware of itself as a person, not just a tool that shuffles through canned
> responses--even if that can provide some simulation of a person in action.

The real difference between "canned" and "ad-hoc" responses, I
believe, is simply in the numbers thereof. Both are certainly finite,
and I suspect it is purely a matter of accuracy if we find emulations
based on a small set of the first to be rough and unsatisfactory...
Even though very simple organic brains (and perhaps very stupid human
beings) behave not that differently.

Another, entirely different issue is whether such "brute force"
emulation is really the most practical way to develop persuasively
"conscious" (that is, conscious tout court) entities. I do not
remember who calculated that a Chinese room would offer a couple of
minutes of "consciousness" in the entire expected duration of the
universe...

-- 
Stefano Vaj



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