From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Sun Sep 05 1999 - 11:56:54 MDT
Spike Jones wrote:
>
> Ja. Cameron, Deep Blue changed the way we think about the task of
> playing chess. Im suggesting that *everything* we do can be calculated
> brute force style, even if we dont fully understand how our minds do it.
> This is a strong statement: that given sufficient computing power, computers
> can enjoy, can feel, can love, etc, as soon as we develop the algorithms.
> Chess is not a unique example, nor speech recognition. This is profound
> as all hell, Cam, since the faster computers are coming, like a speeding
> train. No stopping it.
Enjoying, feeling, and loving is comparatively trivial compared to the
problem of cognition. Not absolutely trivial, not easy, but not
anywhere near as hard, either.
And it takes a *lot* of brute force to overcome the distinction between
recognizing a good idea and originating one - and even then you still
have to code the recognition ability.
> I was with friends today and they asked me a question that stumped me.
> Perhaps extropians can help: How do we *know* we are not *currently*
> uploaded simulations, running on some unimaginably advanced supercomputer?
> Is there any way to know? spike
Logic says there's, oh, at least a 50% chance of this being essentially
a 100% probability. My intuitions, though, tell me that this Universe
is real down to the quark level, which I don't think would be necessary
if this were a simulation. Then again, in this sort of situation it's
kind of hard to trust one's intuitions - but I still do.
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://pobox.com/~sentience/tmol-faq/meaningoflife.html
Running on BeOS Typing in Dvorak Programming with Patterns
Voting for Libertarians Heading for Singularity There Is A Better Way
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:05:02 MST