From: Brent Allsop (allsop@swttools.fc.hp.com)
Date: Fri Aug 07 1998 - 12:13:31 MDT
boogie <extrogod@hotmail.com> asked:
> Computing power reaches brain level computing Nanotechnology matures
> to allow for the above computing power to work AND THEN A MIRACLE
> OCCURS and we have the software and VOILA! superintelligence!
> I'm uncomtable with the MIRACLE thing. Anyone able to replace it?
Very good point! I agree with you and don't think the
mirricle is in the number of abstract mathematical calculations we can
perform or abstract data we can store. Also, I don't think the
mirracle is software. I believe the miricle is all in the phenomenal
(not just abstract) nature of our representations of information.
I can look at a green thing. I represent this with a green
qualia in my brain or mind. I then look at something that reflects
700 nm light and represent this with a very different red quale. I
can tell you what color it is. There is not a lot of computation
going on in such a trivial process and knowledge representation. No
complex software of any kind is required. Indeed, simple color
detecting machines at local paint stores do a much better job than we
do at this. But, the key to our inteligence, is the powerful and
phenomenal nature of the red quale or sensation we use to represent
700 nm light as apposed to the absract, near meaningless way the color
detecting machine represents it.
Once we discover the miricle of what red and it's fundamental
physical nature is, once we finally admit that it is something very
different and more than a mere abstract number representation (for
which the fundamental or physical nature of the representation is
irrelevent) and once we know, objectively, why green is different than
red... Once we discover these kinds of phenomenal and intelligently
powerful things, and can create entities who's knowledge is
represented with the same kind of phenomenal stuff, in the same kind
of unified conscious world of knowledge, then we will finally
understand and be able to create true intelligence or machines that
really know and feel like the machine that is our brain does.
I don't want a mega teraflop machine runing some infinitely
complex abstract software, I just want a simple color detecting device
that can realize that that red stuff it finally feels is much better
than the abstract, unconscious number representation it once used to
represent it's knowledge. When we can finally do and recognize that
simple thing, I think that will be the mirricle that takes us to the
leap.
Brent Allsop
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