[ExI] Daniel Dennett on AI and evolution

[Adam A. Ford]

'A Perfect and Beautiful Machine': What Darwin's Theory of Evolution
Reveals About Artificial IntelligenceI thought it was a pleasurable read.
Dennett equates Alan Turing with Charles Darwin.

"Turing, like Darwin, broke down the mystery of intelligence (or
Intelligent Design) into what we might call atomic steps of dumb
happenstance, which, when accumulated by the millions, added up to a sort
of pseudo-intelligence. "
"We still haven't arrived at "real" understanding in robots, but we are
getting closer. That, at least, is the conviction of those of us inspired
by Turing's insight. The trickle-down theorists are sure in their bones
that no amount of further building will ever get us to the real thing. They
think that a Cartesian *res cogitans*, a thinking thing, cannot be
constructed out of Turing's building blocks. And creationists are similarly
sure in their bones that no amount of Darwinian shuffling and copying and
selecting could ever arrive at (real) living things. They are wrong, but
one can appreciate the discomfort that motivates their conviction.

Turing's strange inversion of reason, like Darwin's, goes against the grain
of millennia of earlier thought. If the history of resistance to Darwinian
thinking is a good measure, we can expect that long into the future, long
after every triumph of human thought has been matched or surpassed by "mere
machines," there will still be thinkers who insist that the human mind
works in mysterious ways that no science can comprehend."
P.s it is Alan Turing's 100th birthday today (23rd).

Kind regards,

Adam A. Ford
Singularity Summit Australia Coordinator
H+ Australia, H+ @ Melbourne Summit Coordinator

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On Sat, Jun 23, 2012 at 5:53 AM, Max More <max at maxmore.com> wrote:

> Haven't time to read it yet, but Dennett's probably worth reading on this
> combination of topics:
>
>
> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/06/a-perfect-and-beautiful-machine-what-darwins-theory-of-evolution-reveals-about-artificial-intelligence/258829/
>
>
>
> --
> Max More, PhD
> Strategic Philosopher
> Co-editor, *The Transhumanist Reader*
> CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation
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