[ExI] Fw: RE: Wishful thinking? //AI and the Singularity//

Wed Aug 18 03:05:06 UTC 2010

-----Forwarded Message-----
>From: "Salvatore, Bill
>Sent: Aug 18, 2010 12:57 AM
>To: "'skeptic at lists.johnshopkins.edu'" <skeptic at lists.johnshopkins.edu>
>Subject: RE: Wishful thinking?
>
>In the long run, AI research is much more significant than 
>exactly how computers shake hands, so i think your brother 
>chose wisely in deciding where to contribute his talents.
>
>At the following meeting, i finally got tired of all the tossing 
>around of jargon that attenders had heard at cocktail parties, 
>said that my comment would be limited to whether machine thought 
>was the same as human thought, and argued that eventually, if not 
>soon, the human brain would be emulated in neural-net hardware -- 
>that it's just connections and weightings.  That's not true (as 
>no one pointed out in response): there are chemical inputs, there's 
>the growing of new synapses and maybe even new neurons, and there 
>is some level of processing that goes on outside the brain; but i 
>was tired of the vacuity of the discussion.
>
>Announcement of meeting: 'The first August meeting of Café Philo DC 
> will take place next Sunday, August 8, 2010 from 1 PM to 3 PM at 
> Reiter's Books, 1900 G St., NW, Washington, DC.  The topic will be: 
> "What Is the Difference Between Man and a Machine?" I will announce 
> the moderator and send out some background readings for general 
> information apropos the topic in a subsequent e-mail.
> As usual, please check out our Café Philo DC Dialogue website at 
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cafephilodcdialogue where possible 
> discussion of this topic can be found.
> Best regards, Ken Feldman Founder, Café Philo DC KenFphilo at aol.com'
>
>Some background readings suggested by KenF: '...a two-part article by 
> William Egginton that appeared recently in the "The Stone", the New 
> York Times's new philosophy commentary series. (Egginton marshals a 
> bold and cogent defense of the essence of human being -- human 
> freedom, subjectivity, reasoning,  imagination, and what he terms 
> 'minimal opacity' -- against both religious and scientific 
> reductiveness that regards humans as machine-like and/or decipherable/
> predictable, whether by gene-driven or God-ordained codes):
>   The Limits of the Coded World, NYT, 7/25/10
>   http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/the-end-of-knowing/ 
>   and the follow-up piece:
>   Freedom and Reality: A Response, NYT, 8/4/10
>   http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/04/freedom-and-reality-a-response/
>
> Scientists: Humans and machines will merge in future, CNN, 2002
>  http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/07/15/bio.tech/index.html
>
> Will Computers Become Super-Human?
>  Dr. Mae-Wan Ho, Institute of Science in Society
>  http://www.i-sis.org.uk/computersvshumans.php
>
> An Interview/Dialogue with Albert Borgmann and 
>  N. Katherine Hayles on Humans and Machines, 1999
>  http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/borghayl.html
>
> Eliza's World, by Nicholas Carr, The Edge
>  http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/carr08/carr08_index.html
>
> Is the Brain's Mind a Computer Program?, John Searle
>  http://www.scribd.com/doc/26814112/Is-the-Brain-s-Mind-a-Computer-Program-Searle
>
> Qualitative Experience in Machines, William G. Lycan
>  http://onthehuman.org/2009/10/qualitative-experience-in-machines/
>
> Mind and Brain: Only the Right Connections, Review of What Makes Us Think?
>  Jean-Pierre Changeux and Paul Ricoeur, by Howard Gardner
>  http://www.pz.harvard.edu/pis/HG_Changeux.htm
>
> Philosophy of artificial intelligence, Wikipedia
>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_artificial_intelligence
>
> Man Versus Machine, Thomas B. Edsall, Huffington Post, 2008
>  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/02/man-versus-machine_n_140115.html
>
> Computers Versus Humans, Theo Pavlidis
>  http://theopavlidis.com/comphumans/comphuman.htm
>
> Machine consciousness, Igor Aleksander, Scholarpedia  (2008)
>  http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Machine_consciousness
>
> Neurorobotics, Jeff Krichmar, Scholarpedia (2008)
>  http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Neurorobotics
>
> Computation of emotions in man and machines, 
>  Peter Robinson and Rana el Kaliouby,  
>  Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 2009
>  http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/364/1535/3441.full
>
> Humans, machines, and the structure of knowledge, Harry M. Collins
>  http://www.stanford.edu/group/SHR/4-2/text/collins.html
>
> For more extensive background reading apropos the differences between 
> humans and machines, our moderator recommends Leibniz's Monadology, as 
> well as The Blue Book and Philosophical Investigations by Ludwig Wittgenstein.'
>
>See also my next message, "the singularity".
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Dave 
>> > SANTA CLARA, Calif. - Proof of extraterrestrial intelligence could
>> > come within 25 years, an astronomer who works on the search said Sunday.
>
>Yeah, but they've been saying that for at least 40 years. That and 
>how fusion reactors are just 10 years away.
>
>And this:
>
>http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/08/ray_kurzweil_does_not_understa.php
>
>>There he goes again, making up nonsense and making ridiculous claims 
>>that have no relationship to reality. Ray Kurzweil must be able to 
>>spin out a good line of bafflegab, because he seems to have the tech 
>>media convinced that he's a genius, when he's actually just another 
>>Deepak Chopra for the computer science cognoscenti.
>>
>>His latest claim is that we'll be able to reverse engineer the human 
>>brain within a decade. By reverse engineer, he means that we'll be 
>>able to write software that simulates all the functions of the human 
>>brain. He's not just speculating optimistically, though: he's 
>>building his case on such awfully bad logic that I'm surprised 
>>anyone still pays attention to that kook.
>
>My brother passed on a chance to help develop TCP/IP with Vint Cerf 
>because he thought AI was a much hotter topic.

Terry W. Colvin
Ladphrao (Bangkok), Thailand
Pran Buri (Hua Hin), Thailand
http://terrycolvin.freewebsites.com/
[Terry's Fortean & "Work" itty-bitty site]