<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><p style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px">Hi William,</p><p style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px">You are the original asker in this thread of subject "Do digital computers feel?" right? </p><p style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px"><span style="font-size:12.8px">No, not me. I have scanned the conversations between you and John and have to say that I don't understand any of it.</span><br></p><p style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px">The idea that code can emulate human experience is just ludicrous to me. Four quadrillion neural firings a second in our brains. I don't think any supercomputer will be able to deal with that for some time. Suppose you isolate a neuron: some have up to tens of thousands of connections with other neurons, which maybe exciting it, suppressing it, or not changing. And I believe that I read where a neuron can change its state from excitatory to inhibitory or the other way around. Just mind boggling complicated to try to understand one second of the neuron's behavior.</p><p style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px">It's like some people seem to believe that neurons are like electrical wires and circuits, able to be laid out in a diagram. Extremely more complicated than that.</p><p style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px">bill w</p></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Dec 20, 2016 at 8:05 PM, John Clark <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:johnkclark@gmail.com" target="_blank">johnkclark@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><span class=""><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">On Tue, Dec 20, 2016 Brent Allsop </span><span dir="ltr" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><<a href="mailto:brent.allsop@gmail.com" target="_blank">brent.allsop@gmail.com</a>></span><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"> wrote:</span><br></div></span><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><span class="">
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000"><p></p><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">> </div>Even John admitted that an
abstracted word like red does not have a redness quality. <p></p></div></blockquote></span><font size="4"><font color="#ff0000"><b>RED</b></font> is<font color="#38761d"> </font>RED but <font color="#00ff00"><b>RED</b></font> is not<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"> RED.</div></font><br><div> <br></div><div><span class=""><blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex" class="gmail_quote"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">> </div>all information in a computer is this type of abstracted
information -</span></blockquote><div><br></div></span><div><font size="4"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">A computer can store all sots of information and that's not true for every type of information. The ASCII sequence "red" can not differentiate between red light and green light even if it has access to testing equipment, but a suitably written program stored in a digital computer can. </div> </font></div><span class=""><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></div><blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex" class="gmail_quote"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">> </div>a purely digital computer does
not qualitatively "feel" like we do.</span></blockquote><div><br></div></span><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"><font size="4">What's with this "we" stuff? The only person I know for sure that feels is me, just because the inside of your head is squishy and the insides of a digital computer isn't is not enough for me to think the two of you are fundamentally different. And what do you have against digital stuff, why would analog be better? </font></div></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"><font size="4"><br></font></div></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"><font size="4"> John K Clark </font></div><font size="4"> </font></div></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br></span></div></div><br></div></div>
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