[ExI] free-will, determinism, crime and punishment.

[Michael M. Butler]

On 8/21/07, Randall Randall <randall at randallsquared.com> wrote:
>
> On Aug 21, 2007, at 3:21 PM, Michael M. Butler wrote:
>
> > On 8/18/07, Randall Randall <randall at randallsquared.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Feathers are important for birds, too, but that's
> >> no reason to put them on airplanes.
> >
> > And how many children have airplanes produced? How many songs?
> >
> > Effort moves toward what is valued. If feelings are completely
> > vestigial in your view, I know I don't want to sit next to you on a
> > plane ride :).
>
> You're reading too much into my (too terse)
> statement.  :)
>
> John Clark asserts, if I remember correctly,
> that if emotions weren't necessary for
> intelligence, evolution would have removed
> them.  I don't know whether emotions are
> necessary for intelligence, but the argument
> that if they weren't, they'd have been
> removed by evolution also proves that you
> can't build airplanes without feathers,
> because if they weren't necessary for flight,
> evolution would have removed them.
>
> The point being, if I'm not belaboring it
> too much, that how evolution solved a
> problem in biology may say nothing about
> how that problem can be most simply solved
> in machina, and so without a theory of
> intelligence that works, we can't say for
> certian whether emotions are necessary for
> intelligence, unless we can find examples
> both ways.

Oh, I take your meaning plain enough. :) I however tend to the view
that any advanced intellect sufficiently distant from me wrt emotions
would be something I'd find implacable and untrustworthy.

I think it has to do in part with mirror neurons (shorthand, I don't
have any idea if the recent vogue for them will pan out, but take that
as "elements of my consciousness that try to model others") and my gut
/ intuition regarding the lessons from Axelrod. Rough parity between
players, and all that.

Wells gave his Martian invaders intellects that were "vast, cool, and
unsympathetic" for a good (creepy-foreboding) reason.

For the record, I wouldn't want to sit next to the Old Testament
Jehovah on an airplane ride either, and I am supposedly created in his
image. :)

-- 
         Michael M. Butler  :  m m b u t l e r  ( a t )  g m a i l . c o m
         "I'm going to get over this some time. Might as well be now."