[ExI] Mental Phenomena

[Adrian Tymes]

On Sun, Jan 19, 2020 at 7:44 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> And I will respond that thinking that machines can have emotions and
> consciousness is really way, way, far out - dreaming.    Read too much
> scifi.  There is not one iota of evidence that such things are possible,
> much less likely.
>

Sure there is.  You, and me, and all of us.  Humans are biological machines.

I know that you actually mean metal and otherwise nonbiological machines.
But our brains work on electrical and chemical signals that silicon brains
could react to just the same - indeed, modern CPUs are inspired by the
electrical side of that, and there have been good simulations of neurons
made - up to the level of complexity of insects, as I recall, and more
complex is being worked on.  No evidence has yet been produced that
extending that up to human-level is impossible.  All the evidence that we
have so far suggests this can be done.
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