[ExI] Strong AI Hypothesis: logically flawed

[John Clark]

William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote:

> the map is not the territory
>

It is if the map contains as much useful information as the territory.

> All body cells die.  All of them.  Yes, cells are replaced while you are
> living but there is a continuity effected by the still living ones.
>

I don't give a hoot in hell about my cells, it's my consciousness that I
want to continue.

> If all cells are dead there is no continuity possible.
>

Consciousness is always continuous except when it stops and never starts up
again, there is a convenient word for that state of affairs, death. Even
when you go to the hospital and undergo anesthesia your consciousness
remains continuous (assuming that you survived the operation), its the
external world that seems to jump ahead discontinuously

> What y'all seem to be saying is that if you could extract a copy of your
> memories, put them into hard drive, then download them into some other body
> or robot, then there are two yous.
>

Yes.

> I say there is only one 'you' and if it is dead then it cannot awaken
> somewhere else.
>

That's the conventional opinion and up to now it has been the correct one
because up to now only one collection of atoms in the entire observable
universe behaves in a Williamflynnwallaceian way, but that is only a
accident of technology and there is no law of physics that ensures that
will always be the case.

 >  A copy is not the original.
>

Exactly what is so original about "the original"? It's certainly not due to
the atoms because atoms are generic and are constantly entering and leaving
your body anyway. Even the original isn't the original because "the
original" doesn't exist and never has.

Earlier you said you would be very upset if you found out that every time
you went to sleep your body was destroyed and replaced by a copy, well lets
take the limit of that and see what happens. Suppose your body was replaced
not once a night since you were born  but every hour, or every minute, or
every second, or every nanosecond, or every Planck Time 10^-43 seconds? So
even as you read this post you are dieing and being reborn 10^43 times
every second, and yet you feel fine and intuitively feel despite all this
destroying and rebuilding SOMETHING has continued and whatever that
something is you want it to continue into tomorrow because you don't want
to die.

> The original premise of all this is, of course, impossible.
>

The  original premise was just that nothing in the laws of physics prevents
molecules from being positioned with nanometer accuracy, and as Drexler and
others have shown that this premise is correct.

> Intelligence is a concept that has been criticized since psychologists
> started working on it.
>

That's true, the idea of Intelligence has been criticized by psychologists
and that's because they aren't very. Of course that doesn't prevent them
from saying at faculty psychology meetings that  Mr. X shouldn't be granted
tenure because he isn't intelligent enough.

> At one point we were reduced to saying that intelligence was what an
> intelligence test tests.
>

I would prefer to say that intelligence is what psychology professors are
looking for in their students.

> Completely operational.
>

You almost make that sound like a bad thing. We learn by examples not by
definitions.

> Which brings us to the most thorny concept of all:  creativity.  Define
> that, if you will.
>

No.

John K Clark
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