[ExI] Whistling past the graveyard

John Clark johnkclark at gmail.com
Wed Apr 6 22:34:08 UTC 2016


On Wed, Apr 6, 2016  PM, William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com>


> ​>> ​
>> there is a big difference between ​the GO program that Google engineers
>> originally wrote and the Go program that beat the human world champion
>> after evolving into something new from playing the game with itself
>> millions of times and learning to get better.
>
>
> ​>
> Yes, but isn't it still the programmers' expertise?
>

​No of course not, how could it be? The original programmers don't
​understand how the program that beat the human GO champion works, they
can't  predict what it will do nor can they beat it at GO. If you don't
understand something, can't duplicate it and can't beat it how can you get
credit for it?



>
> ​> ​
> Isn't that what the programmers expected it to do?
>

​Every teacher expects his students to do well, but you never answered the
question from my previous post; who gets credit for discovering General
Relativity, Einstein or Einstein's teachers, or the teachers of Einstein's
teachers?​ And if Einstein get's the credit then why doesn't the computer?
Because Einstein's brain is squishy and the computer's brain isn't?


> ​> ​
> There is no creativity here that I can tell unless it's the programmers'.
>

​Then Einstein had no creativity either and I'm not sure what the word
means.
​If a computer can outsmart us then whatever you mean by "creativity"
​it ​
can't be anything
​of the slightest
​importance​
​.​...


And then just before the last remaining human being was destroyed he turned
to the Jupiter Brain and said "you know
​,​
I still think I'm more creative than you
​"​
.

And that's what I mean by "whistling past the graveyard".  ​


> ​> ​
> In other words, the computer cannot be smarter than its programmers,
> right?
>

​Obviously that's ​not right, if it were right a computer would not be the
world GO champion. And there is a existence proof that a creation can be
smarter than its creator; Evolution is just random mutation and natural
selection and its dumb as dirt, and yet it created us who are somewhat
smarter than dirt.

 John K Clark
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