From: lydick@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU (Speaker-to-Minerals)
Newsgroups: alt.callahans
Subject: Re: science, religion, and spirituality
Date: 22 Nov 1992 17:34:51 GMT
Organization: HST Wide Field/Planetary Camera
Distribution: world
Reply-To: lydick@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU
NNTP-Posting-Host: sol1.gps.caltech.edu

In article <1992Nov22.113007.17652@midway.uchicago.edu>, mss2@quads.uchicago.edu (Michael S. Schiffer) writes:
=In article <1992Nov22.070835.10836@midway.uchicago.edu> esti@midway.uchicago.edu writes:
=
=>"The easy analogy to make, since most people here are familiar with
=>computers, is with the levels one can speak of with regards to
=>computers and their operation.  The hardware mechanisms are like the
=>"low level explanation" physical sciences of physics and chemistry,
=>while the software is like the "high level explanation" social
=>sciences.  For example, a program is best described at a higher level
=>(though in theory it could be reduced to a lower level of explanation
=>in terms of what goes on in the CPU registers, that's not a *useful*
=>level of explanation-- and other aspects of computer operation may not
=>be describable at all at lower levels).  But no one would claim that
=>the operation of the program requires something beyond the hardware of
=>the program, some sort of metaphysical 'programness'.
=
=	"The operation, no.  But I'll point out that the _purpose_ of
=the program quite certainly and provably _does_ come from outside of
=the computer.

Actually, unless I'm mistaken, some AI researchers at Stanford have managed to
get something going that appears to choose its own purpose, using some sort of
evolutionary setup.  I.e., the (self-modifying) programs were given no
"purpose" by the programmers, they were simply started up.  Those that survived
showed behavior which, in humans, we'd associate with "purpose."  So it appears
that "purpose" may be an emergent property that doesn't require that big father
figure in the sky for its existence.

Given that, could I see your "proof" that the _purpose_ of the program comes
from outside of the computer?

=	"Also, self-awareness as an internal phenomenon strikes me as
=a serious mystery.

By the way, the programs that seemed to have invented their own "purpose"
didn't necessarily show any self-awareness.

=The Turing Test isn't enough, certainly (we have computers which
=can pass it with a fraction of people _now_,

Hell, we've got ROCKS that can pass the Turing test with a fraction of people
_now_ :-).

=	"Again, where the universe `came from', and if that question
=is meaningful, is an important one.  Maybe it's turtles all the way
=down, with the mass of the universe having been part of an
=expansion/contraction cycle forever.  Maybe it just appeared out of
=nothingness in a causeless quantum fluctuation.  But then I'm not sure
=why those explanations have any more compelling power than a
=supernatural one-- it's all blind guessing when we don't even have the
=physical laws of the universe to guide us.

They DON'T have any more compelling power.  The only valid answer I've seen to
the question is "I don't know."  Unfortunately, that's an answer a lot of
people seem quite uncomfortable with.
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