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Re: Cryonic Preservation and Rebirth

Posted: Thu May 09, 2013 4:39 am
by randomseb
Jesse wrote: Oh. This Forum is a fancy gadget that has allowed all of us to learn and grow on our spiritual paths. Damned gadgets!
No sir, this is an argument-conducting opinion propagation service for self-enhancing righteousness generation, see?

Re: Cryonic Preservation and Rebirth

Posted: Thu May 09, 2013 4:53 am
by dharmagoat
randomseb wrote:
Jesse wrote: Oh. This Forum is a fancy gadget that has allowed all of us to learn and grow on our spiritual paths. Damned gadgets!
No sir, this is an argument-conducting opinion propagation service for self-enhancing righteousness generation, see?
:tongue:

It is an example of how technology is so often a mixed blessing. Most of us probably have better things to be doing. Like watching television, for example.

Re: Cryonic Preservation and Rebirth

Posted: Thu May 09, 2013 4:55 am
by randomseb
Don't make me stare at you!

:shock:

Re: Cryonic Preservation and Rebirth

Posted: Thu May 09, 2013 4:57 am
by dharmagoat
randomseb wrote:Don't make me stare at you!

:shock:
Never try to outstare a goat. :smile:

Re: Cryonic Preservation and Rebirth

Posted: Thu May 09, 2013 4:59 am
by randomseb
For those who don't watch movies and want in on that farce:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1234548/

:rolling:


:offtopic: :oops:

:rules: :techproblem:

:focus:

Re: Cryonic Preservation and Rebirth

Posted: Thu May 09, 2013 5:15 am
by shel
jeeprs wrote:
Shel wrote:More scientific fantasy of course, but it seems artificial intelligence is not too far away. Such sentient beings would most likely have an on/off switch, don't you think?
If it has a switch, it is a machine, not a being.
The off switch for humans is the big nob on top. Just turn it 180 degrees. Please don't try this at home though.
If it is conscious, it is a being, not a machine.
Okay. :smile:
I think it would be immoral to create a being by any means other than procreation. Because how could the being give consent to being artificially created? It would put such a being in an intolerable situation (remember BladeRunner?)
Along with Jesse, I didn't give consent for being created either. Does that make me a slave?! :tongue:
Besides, I think 'artificial intelligence' is an oxymoron, like dry water, or perhaps, as you say, a fantasy, like anti-gravity or faster-than-light travel.
How about 'artificial heart'? That's not fantasy! and seems even more oxymoronic to me. They used to think that the mind was the heart, by the way.
The brain is part of a nervous system, which is embedded in a body, which is part of the environment. The act of thought is not in one particular location, exclusively, even though, clearly, the brain plays a role in it.
Sounds good to me.
In any case, I'm sure it is a mistake to say that the disposition of a set of molecules constitutes an act of thought. You might say that it represents an act of thought, but that is what symbols do, like these words I am entering here. In order to understand the meaning, a conscious subject needs to read the symbols and say 'hey I think that's wrong', or whatever. No computer ever does that, in my view.
I doubt they would call AI machines computers.
A computer is a large set of switches. That is all.
A human body is a large set of cells. A central nervous system is a large set of neurons...
Many scientific types really insist that the mind is no different to a computer. in fact it is an article of faith for them. But I regard that as a philosophical failure.
Sounds like a common sense failure to me. A computer is not a mind like ours, it merely computes input data. An AI machine would not be a computer.
The problem is, modern thinking does not have an ontology. It doesn't recognize that a being is not the same as an object. Most of the time when I say that, I get baffled expressions, but I am confident it is true, although it is one of those kinds of things that is hard to prove.
The problem is apparently that you don't understand the subject well enough to communicate your thoughts to the baffled public, or maybe they don't care enough to listen. If someone really understands something they can communicate it, to an interested party.
So I summarize it in various aphorisms, like, 'being is not an object' or 'the source of existence is not amongst the things that exist'. Of course to most scientists those sorts of statements simply do not compute.

Which is the point, in a way. :smile:
Your point is that scientists are like computers? :tongue:

Re: Cryonic Preservation and Rebirth

Posted: Thu May 09, 2013 5:21 am
by shel
dharmagoat wrote:Although there are similarities in the overall function of brains and computers, it is clear that their structure, operation and composition is vastly different. It is also possible that brain neurons, due to their electrochemical sensitivity and subtlety, can function to some degree on the quantum-realm scale, and therefore are influenced by quantum mechanical effects such as quantum entanglement. As such, I believe it is unrealistic to expect machines equipped with artificial intelligence to ever possess anything resembling the sentience of a living creature, and that it is a mistake to ever consider them sentient beings.
An eye opener for you Dharmagoat: google quantum computer.


on edit: I should have read all posts before posting. :emb:

Re: Cryonic Preservation and Rebirth

Posted: Thu May 09, 2013 5:26 am
by randomseb
On that subject I am thinking we all know many a living creature who barely qualifies as sentient, yet is still labeled "human being", so...

Re: Cryonic Preservation and Rebirth

Posted: Thu May 09, 2013 5:27 am
by Wayfarer
Shel wrote:The problem is apparently that you don't understand the subject well enough to communicate your thoughts to the baffled public, or maybe they don't care enough to listen.
It's not any shortcoming on my part, I'm a highly paid communications professional with postgraduate qualification in Buddhist studies. So I'm perfectly capable of expressing the idea. If people don't understand words like 'ontology', it is because it is hard to understand, and also, as you say, most people don't care about ideas of that kind.

As regards the ethics of creating an 'artificial being'. There was a discussion on the radio several months ago about the possibility of creating an embroyo of a neanderthal if a surrogate mother would be found. There was some excited scientist who was being quizzed about the ethics of doing that. 'Ethical questions are subjective', he replied, more or less. I thought, imagine artifically creating an individual person from an extinct species. Could you imagine how difficult it would be, to be that person? Do you think it would be ethical or fair to do that? I certainly don't. I think, in fact, it shows criminal disregard for that being's rights. A person has a right to be born of natural parentage, and, ideally, to be the product of a loving union. Imagine being born, and growing up, as a person who was created as a scientific experiment. I think it is just an unbelievably callous and cruel notion. Talk about 'playing God'. That is why the scientists love it. To me it just symbolizes the inability of science to comprehend the 'human condition'. Sure, individual scientists can do that - but it's because they're people, not because of science. Science is a blunt instrument in questions such as these.

Re: Cryonic Preservation and Rebirth

Posted: Thu May 09, 2013 5:34 am
by dharmagoat
jeeprs wrote:To me it just symbolizes the inability of science to comprehend the 'human condition'. Sure, individual scientists can do that - but it's because they're people, not because of science. Science is a blunt instrument in questions such as these.
Seconded.

Re: Cryonic Preservation and Rebirth

Posted: Thu May 09, 2013 5:36 am
by shel
jeeprs wrote:machines and organisms are fundamentally different kinds of things.
From a particular perspective, sure, but there are other even more fundamental perspectives. Fundamentally, machines and organisms are a variety of chemicals, or molecules, or atomic particles, etc., for example.

Re: Cryonic Preservation and Rebirth

Posted: Thu May 09, 2013 5:38 am
by dharmagoat
shel wrote:An eye opener for you Dharmagoat: google quantum computer.
No problem. To rephrase what I said previously: I'll believe it when I see it, so to speak.

Re: Cryonic Preservation and Rebirth

Posted: Thu May 09, 2013 5:39 am
by randomseb
randomseb wrote:No sir, this is an argument-conducting opinion propagation service for self-enhancing righteousness generation, see?
One major difference is that a machine is based on linear gear-like principles, as opposed to the emergent properties of organisms.

Emergent behavior is what makes massive flocks of birds make fancy patterns in the sky, or schools of fish, or your apparent selfhood arising from the billions of cells in your head.

Or in other words a really large amount of independent things doing their own little dance each following a set of behavior rules, out of which a pattern emerges that is greater than the sum of it's parts. We can only replicate this artificially on a tiny scale.

Re: Cryonic Preservation and Rebirth

Posted: Thu May 09, 2013 5:42 am
by dharmagoat
shel wrote:
jeeprs wrote:machines and organisms are fundamentally different kinds of things.
From a particular perspective, sure, but there are other even more fundamental perspectives. Fundamentally, machines and organisms are a variety of chemicals, or molecules, or atomic particles, etc., for example.
I would say that any perspective is a bit off. That is the nature of perspectives. So I am a fence-sitter on this matter.

Re: Cryonic Preservation and Rebirth

Posted: Thu May 09, 2013 5:47 am
by shel
jeeprs wrote:
Shel wrote:The problem is apparently that you don't understand the subject well enough to communicate your thoughts to the baffled public, or maybe they don't care enough to listen.
It's not any shortcoming on my part, I'm a highly paid communications professional with postgraduate qualification in Buddhist studies. So I'm perfectly capable of expressing the idea. If people don't understand words like 'ontology', it is because it is hard to understand, and also, as you say, most people don't care about ideas of that kind.

As regards the ethics of creating an 'artificial being'. There was a discussion on the radio several months ago about the possibility of creating an embroyo of a neanderthal if a surrogate mother would be found. There was some excited scientist who was being quizzed about the ethics of doing that. 'Ethical questions are subjective', he replied, more or less. I thought, imagine artifically creating an individual person from an extinct species. Could you imagine how difficult it would be, to be that person? Do you think it would be ethical or fair to do that? I certainly don't. I think, in fact, it shows criminal disregard for that being's rights. A person has a right to be born of natural parentage, and, ideally, to be the product of a loving union. Imagine being born, and growing up, as a person who was created as a scientific experiment. I think it is just an unbelievably callous and cruel notion. Talk about 'playing God'. That is why the scientists love it. To me it just symbolizes the inability of science to comprehend the 'human condition'. Sure, individual scientists can do that - but it's because they're people, not because of science. Science is a blunt instrument in questions such as these.
If we're still talking about AI, I think people intuitively fear the idea, because they know on some level that if AI did happen, the fate of our species would be the same as that of the neanderthals.

Re: Cryonic Preservation and Rebirth

Posted: Thu May 09, 2013 5:50 am
by randomseb
shel wrote: If we're still talking about AI, I think people intuitively fear the idea, because they know on some level that if AI did happen, the fate of our species would be the same as that of the neanderthals.
How so? An AI doesn't need to compete for resources against us, unlike the neanderthal which essentially got pushed out existence as modern man took over the hunting grounds and so on..

An AI just sits there and uses power, and doesn't need to sit around on a planet to exist.. In fact they would be much better off in space, floating around near the sun, so there's no competition!

Re: Cryonic Preservation and Rebirth

Posted: Thu May 09, 2013 5:55 am
by Kim O'Hara
randomseb wrote:
shel wrote: If we're still talking about AI, I think people intuitively fear the idea, because they know on some level that if AI did happen, the fate of our species would be the same as that of the neanderthals.
How so? An AI doesn't need to compete for resources against us, unlike the neanderthal which essentially got pushed out existence as modern man took over the hunting grounds and so on..

An AI just sits there and uses power, and doesn't need to sit around on a planet to exist.. In fact they would be much better off in space, floating around near the sun, so there's no competition!
But the AI needs power and, to guarantee that, it needs servants to operate the generating equipment. And it can't trust living servants not to attack it or just goof off, so they have to be slaves. And it can't trust living non-servants not to attack it, so it has to kill them all ...
I'll stop there because I'm sure you can run the B-grade horror movie in your own heads.

:toilet:
Kim

Re: Cryonic Preservation and Rebirth

Posted: Thu May 09, 2013 5:58 am
by dharmagoat
shel wrote:If we're still talking about AI, I think people intuitively fear the idea, because they know on some level that if AI did happen, the fate of our species would be the same as that of the neanderthals.
Killed off by the consequences of climate change? Never!

Re: Cryonic Preservation and Rebirth

Posted: Thu May 09, 2013 6:00 am
by randomseb
The best place for AI to thrive is in space, due to abundant solar power and the ability to live in vacuum, right, and if they have some kind of self-replicating ability, say via some kind of nanobot technology, there's no reason they never need to bother with a nasty, humid planet, which is a terrible habitat for a computer!

And these things can have indefinite lifetimes and so be able to launch themselves on thousand year voyages between solar systems, establishing colonies all over the local star cluster and becoming the dominant inter-galactic species.. at least until it bumps into a similar technology based lifeform launched by some aliens!

Maybe these things are already out there!

Re: Cryonic Preservation and Rebirth

Posted: Thu May 09, 2013 6:11 am
by Wayfarer
shel wrote:
jeeprs wrote:machines and organisms are fundamentally different kinds of things.
From a particular perspective, sure, but there are other even more fundamental perspectives. Fundamentally, machines and organisms are a variety of chemicals, or molecules, or atomic particles, etc., for example.
Rubbish. That view has been completely obliterated by quantum mechanics. There *are* no atoms. There is no fundamental explanatory unit in science. Why do you think physical cosmology now entertains multiple universes, or physics, the Dada-ist 'Many Worlds' interpretation? Not to mention the 95% of the Universe which exists in a format we can even pretend to understand. Get with the times. Or, better still, realize emptiness.