[ExI] Mental Phenomena

[William Flynn Wallace]

ben wrote - I take it that you must be equally disbelieving about the
possibility of
nanotechnology then? Something that exists in biology, but no way can it
be possible in non-biological systems?

I never said it was impossible, just enormously complicated.  I believe
nanotechnology will revolutionize many things- buildings that build
themselves, injections into our bodies to cure things.  Most unimaginable
now.

What interests me most about AI is their ability to correct the sorts of
mental errors we are so likely to make.  For instance:  I answer a lot of
questions on Quora.  I get a lot of this:  "Do you think you can tell if a
person is good or bad?"  My answer, to keep it short: "There are no bad
people.  There are no good people.  Nobody is totally good or bad."

Simple overgeneralization, and yet supposedly intelligent people are making
this easily avoidable error.  AI can be programmed to think better than we
can, not just faster.  That excites me.  Whether they are conscious or ever
will be, does not. Either way is OK with me.  Is there some advantage I am
missing, having AI being conscious?

bill w


On Sun, Jan 19, 2020 at 12:32 PM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On 19/01/2020 15:41, BillW 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.  bill w
>
> I take it that you must be equally disbelieving about the possibility of
> nanotechnology then? Something that exists in biology, but no way can it
> be possible in non-biological systems?
>
> I'm wondering how far does this go? There must be some line along the
> capabilities of biological systems, where on this side, non-bio systems
> can do the same thing, but on the other side, they can't. Any idea where
> this line might be?
>
> (to avoid misunderstanding, I don't actually think that any such line
> exists, or can exist)
>
> --
> Ben Zaiboc
>
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