From: J. R. Molloy (jr@shasta.com)
Date: Tue Jan 15 2002 - 09:57:07 MST
From: "Dossy" <dossy@panoptic.com>
> how do you differentiate between creativity and sentience?
The ability to create, or the action of creating (creativity) is obviously
different from the capability to sense, or the action of sensing and directly
experiencing (sentience). Consequently, the algorithms and principles involved
in acts of creation do not require creative agents to be sentient. One can be
creative without being sentient, and conversely one can be sentient without
being creative. For example, google the phrase "computer generated poetry" to
discover hundreds of instances of non-sentient creativity.
> Our sentience is a gift that so few of us appreciate, or
> learn to appreciate.
Yes, indeed...
Superlative sentience (total awareness) reveals that the highest use of
thought is to allow us to stop thinking (while being wide awake), so that we
can appreciate the epiphenomenon of self-awareness. To understand this is to
know why the so-called "Fermi paradox" is no paradox at all. The ultimate peak
of all the extropic technologies and creative algorithms of the universe is
superlative sentience. If human society makes it impossible for superlative
sentience (which is just one of the ninety-nine names of nirvana) to emerge in
the human brain, then devolution and irreversible entropy ensues, because from
that point on, the human species knows not what it does... it creates without
sentience.
--- --- --- --- ---
Useless hypotheses, etc.:
consciousness, phlogiston, philosophy, vitalism, mind, free will, qualia,
analog computing, cultural relativism, GAC, Cyc, Eliza, cryonics, individual
uniqueness, ego, human values, scientific relinquishment, malevolent AI,
non-sensory experience, SETI
We move into a better future in proportion as the scientific method
accurately identifies incorrect thinking.
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