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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jul 20, 2015 - 09:35pm PT
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New Horizon senses it's surroundings and responds to those sensations, in real time, with no direct human intervention. The plan of the trip outlined the basic research program. However, that outline did not anticipate every detail of the trip, it could not possibly have done that. So the New Horizons had to be able to act autonomously on the "real time" flow of what it was sensing, and to adapt the details in response to those sensations.
Like wise my vacuum cleaner which tools round the living room bumping into things turning and moving across the rug like it "knows" what it's doing is a sentient being, neither can I prove my garbage can is not a sentient being by the above parameters. I am certainly fooled into believing these machines have intelligence therefore they do and so I have enrolled them into classes at the local community college for there own betterment after all, where they plan to study creative writing and music composition as they seem for some reason to dismiss the hard sciences as just plain silly.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Jul 20, 2015 - 09:55pm PT
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Ed, I can appreciate your abstinence to everything unmeasurable. But if feels like your trolling or pushing the envelope with word meaning? And that's cool.
For instance, "Horizon is sensing...". I guess your describing things like, taking the temperature, keeping track of speeds and distances, keeping time, etc.
Is a clock "sensing" when it moves the second hand? Or when it turns to Tues form Mon at the stroke of 12:00:01?
When Horizon senses something like temperature change, what does it understand? What does it feel?
When my toes get frostbite and fall off, or when I touch molten lava my sensory inputs tells me pain invades and to do something different. At which time my emotions may tell me to cry. Or if I was feeling sadistic to laugh..
Sentience isn't confined by the 5 senses, but those senses being described through our emotions.
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WBraun
climber
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Jul 20, 2015 - 10:03pm PT
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you can't say I have sentience, or that I have "being." You don't know
Yes we can because we DO know.
Study how the life force leaves the material body at death.
Largo made reference to this a long time ago in this subject matter.
You can see it with proper developed consciousness .....
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Jul 20, 2015 - 10:58pm PT
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you have this wrong, or they are being a bit too cute... (or perhaps just dumb)... the precise statement of this is we have no description of matter, beyond some point. It is not that there is no extent, that there is "nothing." Simply, we have no description. . . . These are not the same thing, though you fervently wish them to be (Ed)
You would think that after being told this in one form or another , over and over, JL would possibly consider abandoning his dream that all reduces to no-thing. I suspect the Prodigies are goading him on, chuckling among themselves in their faculty lounges. Either that or they have meditated themselves into the same belief and have become evangelicals with JL their prophet.
If only we weren't so frightened of the experiential adventure we too could see the perfection of this metaphysical structure and become apostles.
;>)
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jul 20, 2015 - 11:18pm PT
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I am certainly fooled into believing these machines have intelligence...
how is it that you are "fooled"?
you observe intelligent behavior, and then you remind yourself that they are "just machines" incapable of something you refer to as "knowing."
Yet when you attempt to define "knowing" in any way, you can't. When you attempt to describe how you "know" the machine can't "know" you can't. In fact, you are "fooled" into attributing the behavior to intelligence when you "know" it can't be.
But you don't have any reason not to believe that I am "fooling" you too, in the same way, by exhibiting intelligent behavior but not "knowing".
It is interesting to consider turning your point around... perhaps you are being fooled by your sensation of "knowing." In many ways, when you're asked the hard questions about "knowing" you can't answer them. You (and Werner and MikeL and Largo) all use the same dodge: it is beyond our "normal" ways of "knowing" so you can't understand them that way. But if you don't dodge, you might also come to the conclusion that you can't answer the question because the phenomenon of "knowing" isn't at all what you think it is... you've been fooled.
my internal clock is telling me that it's time for bed... I even have an idea of how that "machine" internal to my body, works.
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WBraun
climber
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Jul 21, 2015 - 07:40am PT
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Ed -- " you've been fooled."
Yes, according to one who's fixed in the limited consciousness of gross materialism,
that would be their view point towards the subject of subtle material and spiritual realms.
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WBraun
climber
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Jul 21, 2015 - 08:31am PT
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Apparently too subtle for woo filled spiritualists to detect, either.
Those are your very owns words trying to put them into the mouths of others.
All the gross materialists detect the subtle material and spiritual realms also unknowingly at various times and are bewildered by those energies.
Thus they make stupid ignorant statements to describe those experiences due to their very poor fund of knowledge continually .....
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jul 21, 2015 - 08:54am PT
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I like Werner's straight talk about the soul. We already have plenty of good words for spacecraft which have gone beyond the physical. I see no use in looking for a new vocabulary or better definitions.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Jul 21, 2015 - 09:06am PT
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Ed: In many ways, when you're asked the hard questions about "knowing" you can't answer them. You (and Werner and MikeL and Largo) all use the same dodge: it is beyond our "normal" ways of "knowing" so you can't understand them that way. But if you don't dodge, you might also come to the conclusion that you can't answer the question because the phenomenon of "knowing" isn't at all what you think it is... you've been fooled.
I didn’t think that I was a part of this conversation, Ed.
You continue to look into my mind and tell me what you surmise. It’s like a form of rape. I’d rather you ask.
As far as I’m concerned, I’m the only thing in my world called consciousness. I’m not sure what it is. But you, . . . you’re omniscient.
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jstan
climber
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Jul 21, 2015 - 09:34am PT
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Ed: It is interesting to consider turning your point around... perhaps you are being fooled by your sensation of "knowing." In many ways, when you're asked the hard questions about "knowing" you can't answer them. You (and Werner and MikeL and Largo) all use the same dodge: it is beyond our "normal" ways of "knowing" so you can't understand them that way. But if you don't dodge, you might also come to the conclusion that you can't answer the question because the phenomenon of "knowing" isn't at all what you think it is... you've been fooled.
I don’t know of any instance where a voltmeter has been successfully calibrated, using only the voltmeter itself. But that is what we are trying to do here on ST and people have been trying o accomplish for thousands of years. To understand the brain on a philosophical level. We wander around spending thousands of words, like "sentience", none of whose meanings are widely agreed upon. Dennet comments that everyone considers themselves experts on “consciousness” simply because we feel we have it. Everything ends up being based on an entirely personal “feeling”.
Zero output results even from years of effort and tens of thousands of posts. I would hypothesize the answer to Ed’s fundamental question, how are we led to behave as we do, is that the imperative to survive has led us to evolve hardwiring designed to frame the outside world in terms of conflict. Decisions. Choices. Do I dodge that rock headed towards me? Philosophy provides us endless choices. Unending conflict, None of which have any real consequence. The perfect playground. And it is just a playground.
Recent news reports tell of MRI research involving experiments intended to allow us to project what a person is thinking based on MRI data. And a national effort for understanding the brain's operations has been announced. We could well be entering a new era wherein the old playground is being slowly squeezed out of existence.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 21, 2015 - 11:05am PT
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When I repeatedly remind what my friends say - that all matter reduces to that which has no dimensionality, extent, and that matter itself is not the solid stuff and doesn't even have a universal definition
Ed says: you have this wrong, or they are being a bit too cute... (or perhaps just dumb)... the precise statement of this is we have no description of matter, beyond some point. It is not that there is no extent, that there is "nothing." Simply, we have no description.
Yes Ed, I am dumb and my friends who work at JPL etc, are also dumb. You are in fact dumb if you ever thought I was saying that matter IS nothing. But rather, there are phenomenon in the world that are no-things, that they don't have solid stuff (rest mass?) but nonetheless are phenomenon, like photons. To quote my friend, "We have no description of matter because at the QM level there is no fixed aspect to describe. A general misconception is that there is actually some solid thing or substance upon which reality is built or sourced, and that we don't yet know how to describe it. In fact, we cannot describe 'it' because 'it' is not a thing or stuff in the sense or substance that we see on the macro level." If you disagree with this, kindly say where and why.
I said: Sentience is an altogether different phenomenon which is an extension of the "being" in human being, contrasted with the doing (stimulus response) of the machine.
Ed said: You might as well take on Werner's definition... what you have here is a definition, not an explanation. And you totally miss what I am saying, which is that you can't say I have sentience, or that I have "being." You don't know... but you argue: 'Ed is a human being, human beings have "being", Ed has "being"'
You are trying very hard to promote scientism here Ed, that only through measurements can we "know." My definition of sentience, as I said and have said, starts with the three cornerstones of awareness, focus, and attention. Does that sound like Warner (who I love like a brother incidentally? For you, who are only interested in how something is "made," or how it is sourced, all real definitions issue from an explanation how something arises from physical or material antecedents.
And so you search for those. In the case of sentience, you end up empty handed just as cannot define what the hell matter actually IS. But wait, says Ed. We just need more ... you guessed it, material data.
My first question still stands: We cannot physically prove that we are sentient. What does that mean to Ed? that we are NOT sentient?
Ed rambles on: You don't know any more than that... you don't know that New Horizons doesn't have "being" even when it acts as if it does... your refutation? "New Horizons is not a human being, only human beings have "being", New Horizons has no "being"'
This in spite of the fact that New Horizons exhibits behavior that implies it has being. And in fact, has been built to have it...
Now Ed, you either ate too much LSD or you are binging on Sci-Fi novels. "Being" is different than existing, and it is not something that Dr. Frankenstein can "build," anymore than you can build gravity. Do you really and truly believe that for the lack of physical proof, we can safely assume that what the spaceship registers in its machinery is selfsame as the direct experience you have when drinking beer. Do you believe the rocket ship has qualia, the personal, subjective experience of BEING New Horizon and hurtling through space, not just registering stimulai and responding by way of its programming, but also having a subjective/experiential sense of itself being alive in real time.
Sorry to say, Ed, but the space ship is not, in fact, alive. It is just another bucket of bolts.
JL
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jul 21, 2015 - 12:04pm PT
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the space ship is not, in fact, alive. It is just another bucket of bolts.
Yes. The space ship lacks anima.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Jul 21, 2015 - 12:45pm PT
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One definition of "being" might be A phenomenon capable of endless philosophying about itself.
New Horizons: Fails test
JL, MikeL, Duck, etc.: Pass test.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jul 21, 2015 - 01:07pm PT
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Yet when you attempt to define "knowing" in any way, you can't. When you attempt to describe how you "know" the machine can't "know" you can't. In fact, you are "fooled" into attributing the behavior to intelligence when you "know" it can't be.
There is a confusion here between knowing, in the sense a machine might recognize and respond, and the sentience that observes that action.
Both my Iron and coffee pot recognize when they are no longer in use and turn off "auto" matically. The sentient element is missing, I would attribute to both of those machines a kind of intelligence if I use the term loosely but I feel a certainty (knowledge) that neither machine exhibits anything like human intelligence... such as memory, conceptualizing, abstracting, imagining, attending, concentrating, selecting (consciously), relating, planning, extrapolating, predicting, etc.
I think there's something to this notion of the soul. Depending on how you define it, it's not such a bad term for that element unique to all of us as both a part and apart.
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rbord
Boulder climber
atlanta
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Jul 21, 2015 - 01:54pm PT
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My favorite strategy of being is to just declare myself the winner in my own mind. You too? :-) It's just something that I know - you just don't understand due to poor fund of knowledge, or inattention, or being too tied to your materialist perspective. Oh hell at least now we're willing to include the Blackmen in our list of misunderstanders.
There's no I in mind! Oh wait a minute .. Survival of the fattest? No you misunderstand - its survival of the phattest.
Who says you misunderstand? Not I! Oh who am I kidding. :-)
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Bushman
Social climber
Elk Grove, California
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Jul 21, 2015 - 02:36pm PT
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Here and After
Either every organism has a soul or it does not, humans are not exclusive to the soul department and to believe such is both arrogant and a misuse of the organic life form in which you inhabit. All lifeforms are temporary and our temporary sentience is a condition and phenomenon of the organic state of existence.
To be believe your soul existed in another life or was created for this life and will continue after your life is over is to believe there is a purpose for the soul to have permanence, and that there is a reason for the soul to exist for all eternity. Even the universe itself will not exist for all eternity. What place is it that heaven exists, if not within our universe, where it could exist for all eternity?
If all beings have souls then this imaginary place in another dimension beyond our universe where all souls would come to preside would be populated with the soul of every organism and life form that ever existed or was created throughout all of time.
In other words, the hereafter would be an alternate universe peopled with magical beings that had superpowers and eternal life, there would be near infinite numbers of us, and we would be composed of a variety of forms beyond our imagination.
That's a nice fantasy, yet only a fantasy. I guess it's easier to believe that only the selfish, arrogant, murdering, and earth polluting humans should deserve to live in such a place.
"The surest argument against sound logic is to feign ignorance that you ever heard it in the first place"
-bushman
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Gnome Ofthe Diabase
climber
Out Of Bed
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Jul 21, 2015 - 03:51pm PT
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Here here for the words and sentiment of the full fusillade of the one who makes his own small fuselage to specs, that lets it scream as loud as his words, For all things have "souls".
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cintune
climber
The Utility Muffin Research Kitchen
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Jul 21, 2015 - 03:58pm PT
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Soul is a comforting abstraction. Mind is the functionality of trillions of synapses whose chemical and electrical interactions have been honed by billions of years of evolution. It is a wondrous thing, but it remains a thing, subject to imperfections and limitations. Take away varying degrees of that functionality and mind simply is no more. Go visit an Alzheimer's ward if you think otherwise. We've been over all this so many times now. And yet believers keep on believing. So, great. Whatever gets you thru the dark night of your "soul."
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rbord
Boulder climber
atlanta
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Jul 21, 2015 - 04:23pm PT
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Just see what there is to see. It's as clear as day! What, that's what you see? No, you must be doing it wrong. :-)
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