Can a man-made computer become conscious?

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Belindi
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Re: Can a man-made computer become conscious?

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Jan Sand wrote:
Jan Sand wrote: April 20th, 2018, 8:04 am After a long life well stocked with massive frustrations the concept of personal pride can only be viewed with a somewhat wistful small smile. With the current society totally submerged in the wild farce of people totally devoted to getting rich while leaping towards several varieties of oblivion I can only suppose something somewhere is rolling on the floor laughing.
Jan, I didn't say personal pride. By "pride" I don't mean stupid conceitedness. Our species is bound for destruction sooner or later. The someone who is rolling on the floor laughing at our nonsense is a personification of hopelessness. There is another someone who is a personification of what is good in men. The pride I referred to is pride in the goodness of men , and despite our imminent destruction we can keep that pride.The goodness of men, like the badness of men, is historical fact, and our demise doesn't alter facts.
Jan Sand
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Re: Can a man-made computer become conscious?

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I cannot deny that many factors in social structures demand that individuals behave with intelligence, respect and consideration for the welfare of all members of society but the violations of those attitudes are so obvious on a scale of such immense thoughtlessness and brutality that the likelihood of the survival of the species and much of life on the planet is decreasing at such a pace that having hope is total unreality. Obviously that laughing individual I mentioned merely was a neutral observer far removed from the action and was totally theoretical.
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SimpleGuy
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Re: Can a man-made computer become conscious?

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Mankind should develop a concscious thinking computer , but we should somehow give this reality a mathematical signature to look at an in which this computer could do everyday inference and build up other contexts and terms in which this conscience is written in a meta language. This could give then decisive clues to formal theoretical computer science and mathematics and physics.
Jan Sand
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Re: Can a man-made computer become conscious?

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What current civilization should do and what it seems to be doing is obviously something quite different. Aside from the destruction of the biosphere, the atmosphere. and the destruction of the potentials for producing sustenance without violently upsetting the vital relationships required for sustaining life on the planet, the enthusiastic race to produce artificial intelligence to enhance military power and invest in areas for financial profit with no regard to technology becoming uncontrollable and deleterious to human existence seems to be unstoppable whatever the consequences.
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The Beast
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Re: Can a man-made computer become conscious?

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In the immensity of the Universe an observer meditates and gazes like Don Quixote his imaginaries holograms programs quantifying their moral knowledge. Is there an ethical order? The surrealistic vision of its disintegration… to scorn what is not his stormy weather. It is his sacred egoism to obey the commands offered to his will. The lessons of the old breed seem entirely lost for the new breed who have come since. Tragic as it is through victories and ruins they bent rules and figures falling for the freedom of the Beast “then the ravages of the spirit will be merely destructive and devouring, there will be nothing other than destruction.” said he Nemesis. The maker of Greek tragedies will be defeated by the quintessence energies of waiting creatures transfigured by the power of the secret garden whose entrance is in the magical garden of the Alhambra. From Fortune take the two-bit letter from the pressing finger and post it on your hologram.
Belindi
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Re: Can a man-made computer become conscious?

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Jan Sand wrote: April 21st, 2018, 4:12 am I cannot deny that many factors in social structures demand that individuals behave with intelligence, respect and consideration for the welfare of all members of society but the violations of those attitudes are so obvious on a scale of such immense thoughtlessness and brutality that the likelihood of the survival of the species and much of life on the planet is decreasing at such a pace that having hope is total unreality. Obviously that laughing individual I mentioned merely was a neutral observer far removed from the action and was totally theoretical.
I know that the rolling on the floor person was a figure of speech as was my figure of speech about the person that is the good in humanity.

I agree that the problem of evil is so enormous that hope is out of the question for pessimists like we two. Religious people make sense of the world and its problem of evil in their several religious rationales. I am not religious insofar as I believe that there is hope for the safety of our species. I am religious insofar as I believe that good is worth fighting for despite the probable outcome.

The bad men will probably get control of intelligent machines. This is not sufficient reason to give in to them.
Jan Sand
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Re: Can a man-made computer become conscious?

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One of the fundamental misunderstandings about humans or other living things is the dynamics each individual operates under and how it is either condemned or approved by some cultural standard or other. Life seeks successes in its enterprises and each living thing eventually works out means to attain that success. Mind frames differ a great deal in these activities and what may be good or evil may be judged differently under varying circumstances. There are no universal standards and that is a major problem.
Belindi
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Re: Can a man-made computer become conscious?

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Jan Sand wrote: April 22nd, 2018, 7:39 am One of the fundamental misunderstandings about humans or other living things is the dynamics each individual operates under and how it is either condemned or approved by some cultural standard or other. Life seeks successes in its enterprises and each living thing eventually works out means to attain that success. Mind frames differ a great deal in these activities and what may be good or evil may be judged differently under varying circumstances. There are no universal standards and that is a major problem.

The universal standard is people in harmony enough to keep individuals alive and contented enough. People who don't understand or embrace that are sociopaths of whom there examples in all societies although in some societies sociopaths are called 'madmen' and in other societies they are called 'witches' , or 'criminals', and so on. Not so? The bad men I refer to are those who care only about themselves as individuals i.e.sociopaths. I can't imagine any culture that is not about how people should live together as an issue from how the world is constituted. Men have to serve other men and intelligent machines have to be made so that they aren't reserved for the use of eccentrics.
Jan Sand
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Re: Can a man-made computer become conscious?

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You make it seem so simple and it is not. Humans have always divided themselves in families and races and religions and social classes and professions and philosophies and even in sexes and ages and each group demands to be recognized as somehow special and looked down on others. that is not just a human problem but a fundamental evolutionary dynamic and it has not only never been solved in human society, people who try to solve it are considered evil. Individual humans vary considerably and even identical twins change as each goes through varying experiences requiring the same DNA to meet the changing environment differently. People are not the same and huge resentments are created when they are treated the same way. Those eccentrics you seem to despise are the geniuses and the inventors and the artists who have made humans great and have also done horrible things to society. It is a terribly mixed bag and nobody really knows how to deal with it.
Jan Sand
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Re: Can a man-made computer become conscious?

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On an aside, I find the question rather fascinating. What computers are not man made?
Belindi
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Re: Can a man-made computer become conscious?

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Jan Sand wrote: April 22nd, 2018, 11:16 pm You make it seem so simple and it is not. Humans have always divided themselves in families and races and religions and social classes and professions and philosophies and even in sexes and ages and each group demands to be recognized as somehow special and looked down on others. that is not just a human problem but a fundamental evolutionary dynamic and it has not only never been solved in human society, people who try to solve it are considered evil. Individual humans vary considerably and even identical twins change as each goes through varying experiences requiring the same DNA to meet the changing environment differently. People are not the same and huge resentments are created when they are treated the same way. Those eccentrics you seem to despise are the geniuses and the inventors and the artists who have made humans great and have also done horrible things to society. It is a terribly mixed bag and nobody really knows how to deal with it.
If I were an anthropologist which I'm not I could not expand of this complex matter in these pages. I agree with you that there are always elites and always will be elites. I am too Left-Wing and democratic to agree that elites must be as powerful as that is not just a human problem but a fundamental evolutionary dynamic and it has not only never been solved in human society, people who try to solve it are considered evil. implies. I'm not a thorough communist however and so I agree there is always an elite group in any society. I also hope for increasing social mobility so that individuals may choose to rise or sink within the spectrum of social statuses.

I don't think of inventors and artists as eccentrics but as avant garde leaders in their society . Actually I did hesitate before using the word 'eccentrics' as I like rebels and despised persons when they are not criminals or cruel. I hope you know what I mean now. Your image is a bell curve. I disagree that the bell curve applies to the question of social status, which I conceive of as a permanent polemic model which varies in its content.

Intelligent machines must not be allowed to belong to the lower social levels. The "lower social levels" are not to be defined by worldly power ; some very powerful and very rich people are morally bankrupt, and are sometimes criminals by national or international law.
Jan Sand
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Re: Can a man-made computer become conscious?

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The somewhat amusing and dangerous growth of machines with potential intellect far greater than the humans who create them is that they will inevitably be owned by nobody but themselves. The elites who are excitedly funding and promoting these gadgets are, as usual , too stupid to realize that they are destroying the basis for their elite status and that would be very satisfying except that the joy of seeing a dumb captain of a sinking ship drown is somewhat dampened by the fact that we are all passengers on that ship.

That you respect intellect and creativity has nothing to do with society in general who, throughout history has seen to it that they lead miserable lives and most often kills them for their originality.
Belindi
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Re: Can a man-made computer become conscious?

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Jan Sand wrote:
The somewhat amusing and dangerous growth of machines with potential intellect far greater than the humans who create them is that they will inevitably be owned by nobody but themselves.
I'd support personal autonomy for intelligent machines if and only if intelligent machines were geared to the well being of the society that makes them.

It's not inevitable that these machines will be made by criminals, but we need to work hard to keep them out out of the scope of criminals. Same old .
Jan Sand
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Re: Can a man-made computer become conscious?

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No regulation, favorable or otherwise, is possible over creatures cleverer than and totally infiltrating all sectors of human society . It is foolish to think otherwise.
Belindi
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Re: Can a man-made computer become conscious?

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Jan Sand wrote: April 23rd, 2018, 5:59 am No regulation, favorable or otherwise, is possible over creatures cleverer than and totally infiltrating all sectors of human society . It is foolish to think otherwise.
I think it might be possible. Already we have some very stupid leaders and elite groups who have power over intelligent people. It's possible for an elite or a leader to be both stupid and nice enough and to keep control of cleverer citizens.

Leaders have to obey the law. It's true that intelligent machines could be made to be criminals , and this is what we have to contend with whether or not we want to contend. They are coming, Jan, whether or not you and I want them. I don't see how they could be banned.
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