[ExI] The second step towards immortality

[Kelly Anderson]

On Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 4:44 PM, Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Jan 9, 2014 3:01 PM, "Anders Sandberg" <anders at aleph.se> wrote:
> > If what you care about is the stuff coming out of the black box, then
> what matters is whether there are any relevant differences between the
> output and what it should be. But sometimes we care about how the stuff is
> made.
>
> Consider why we care, though.  Often it signals that the stuff coming out
> is not in fact the same, or that there is different stuff going in.
>
The physics of this universe combined with the mathematics of probability
make it impossible to create a "look up table" that could even begin to
pretend consciousness.

> To take your child labor vs. microprocessors example, food and water are
> necessary inputs to the former - and eventually, replacement children.
>
> We can not prove that, at some level, our brains are not "just" code.
>
They are code combined with experience, and also a mechanism for learning.
Surprisingly, we alone among all the species on earth have good methods for
teaching new concepts.

> It is entirely possible to take typical, functioning human beings, and
> declare everything they do to be some preprogrammed mechanism, and no one
> can absolutely prove otherwise.  By the same token, any code that looks to
> all black box inspections to be sentient, IS sentient as far as we can
> prove.
>
You can't preprogram enough to do what humans do. Consider the number of
bits of information in DNA. Even if that is highly compressed, it still
isn't enough (see information theory) to account for the stuff in people's
heads.

> (Of course, it needs to actually pass all said inspections.  No computer
> code yet has been able to do that.)
>
Nope, but they are coming fairly close. I don't think it will be too long
before the Turing Test is passed for limited time interactions.

-Kelly
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