[ExI] Whistling past the graveyard

William Flynn Wallace foozler83 at gmail.com
Thu Apr 7 22:30:14 UTC 2016


On Thu, Apr 7, 2016 at 12:01 PM, John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Apr 7, 2016 at 9:57 AM, William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com
> > wrote:
>
> ​> ​
>> Is an AI always programmed to take the most likely route to success
>>
>
> ​Unfortunately no, people would love to program a computer so that it has
> the best chance of solving the traveling salesman problem but nobody knows
> how to do it. ​
>
>
>
> ​> ​
> to me, this gets us directly into the free will problem
>> ​Free will? What an odd phrase, whatever can it mean?​
>
>
>  John K Clark
>

​Well, for one thing it means that I cannot answer the question about
Einstein without taking a stand on free will.​


​The computer cannot do otherwise than what it was programmed to do.  There
is no human parallel to this, unless you want to go down to the level of
DNA and say that it is responsible for all that we do since it programmed
us to learn.  If you want to look at it this way, then we are indeed
automatons.  And Einstein gets no credit;  given the makeup of his brain
and what was put into it, he had no choice other than to create his physics
and math.  This is a tough philosophical position to dispute.  Free will
exists because we hope we have it, and we must assume it so that we can
punish antisocial people.  If there is any hard evidence for it I don't
know of it.  I have no conception of what that would be.
​
The AI may produce unexpected results, but that was known beforehand, if
the code was OK.  So, credit to the programmers, none to the AI.

bill w


>
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