HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: exukjb@exu.ericsson.se (ken bell)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Freewill, chaos and digital systems
Date: 28 Aug 92 17:34:21 GMT
Organization: Ericsson Network Systems, Inc.

In article <Bt4xt1.MA0.1@cs.cmu.edu> rudis+@cs.cmu.edu (Rujith S DeSilva) writes:
>From: rudis+@cs.cmu.edu (Rujith S DeSilva)
>Subject: Freewill, chaos and digital systems
>Date: 17 Aug 92 16:00:32 GMT

>(1) Does freewill arise solely through the mechanism of chaos?
>(2) Can digital systems exhibit chaos (as opposed to simulating it to a
>    limited extent)?
>(3) What if a digital system is coupled to a chaotic system, e.g., some sort
>    of unstable oscillator that can be sampled to give one bit of information?

>Just some random thoughts that popped into my head ... comments solicited.

>Rujith de Silva.
>Carnegie-Mellon University.

>// Ivy: What Roman golfers shouted //

Can there be absolute or total chaos? By "total chaos" one would presumably 
have in mind no order or intelligible relationships at all, not just no 
discoverable ones.  I don't think this is coherent.  Imagine a cosmos, no, 
sorry, a chaos, with particles flying about in random motion.  Wouldn't the 
particles themselves be organized a bit? 



 
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Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,rec.arts.sf.misc,alt.cyberpunk
From: ratner@owlnet.rice.edu (Logan Joshua Ratner)
Subject: Re: _The Turing Option_
Organization: Rice University
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 16:38:59 GMT

In article <COSC176T.92Aug29235513@menudo.uh.edu> cosc176t@menudo.uh.edu (Jason Asbahr) writes:
>
> Hans Moravec says:
>
>>   You're right, technology is making things worse.  Let's get
>>   rid of television.
>
>I wouldn't mind getting rid of *most* of television, and changing
>the nature of the rest.  An alarming (is it fashionable to be
>alarmist?) portion of everyday television programming is fairly
>mind-numbing stuff -- I try to avoid it whenever possible!


Oh, I really feel I must disagree.  Personally, I find most aspects
of Pop Culture academically fascinating.  Visual media especially so.
Actually, there seems to be a large emphesis in studying Pop Culture
within Postmodern thought (especially in Literary Circles.)  Seeing
Jason posted to alt.cyberpunk I feel free to bring up postmodernism.

In any case, I feel TV may in fact be the best window into the mass
subconscious around.  Want to see what really moves a modern culture?
Check out the top rated shows in prime time, then ask yourself, "Why
does this sell?"

To put it in 'punk terms, the masses can be useful if you know how
to move them.  If that seems callous, well, thats the way thing run 
in this group sometimes.

There is a danger to all this, however.  Check out Gibson's short story
"The Gernbeck Continumn" in the Burning Chrome collection.  Just because
you are intellectually aware that you're viewing the mass subconscious 
doesn't mean it won't reach you too.  Emotions are contagous...

Well, know that I've made my plug for the day, I'm going to go rent 
a really bad movie.  They keep the flying saucers away %-)

					Ratner

P.S. I'd love to recomend I book that deals with these ideas further,
(especially the relationship between C.P. and postmodernism) but I 
don't remember the author off-hand.  The title is Strange Weather, and
it is non-fiction.  If anyone is interested, I'll look it up and let 
you know who it's by.
					Rat
From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: what is consciousness for?
Date: 1 Sep 92 18:39:09 GMT
Organization: SPSS Inc.

In article <iordonez.715366473@academ01> iordonez@academ01.mty.itesm.mx (Ivan Ordonez-Reinoso) writes:
>I find very hard to argue about the use of consciousness when we don't
>have the least idea of what it is. Defining consciousness as 'self
>awareness' is a somewhat circular definition, and it would indeed,
>as M. Minsky points, imply that we human have very little conciousness,
>and that computers (which can have a full internal description of their
>own function) might be more conscious than we are.

I find this last point rather opaque.  In what sense do computers have
a "full internal description of their own function"?  The process of 
compiling a program destroys most of the descriptive information the
programmer may have provided, and even more information about what the
program is doing and why is never reflected in code in the first place.
You could write a program that "knows what it's doing" in the sense of
constructing audit trails, or accessing internal state flags, or even
inspecting its own code, but all of this would take a lot of programming--
it's not inherent in the nature of the computer.  And even if it were done,
it's only a convenient fiction to speak of a program, or a module, or 
a line of code, knowing or doing anything.  The CPU by its nature is not
aware of anything more than the instruction and operand in front of its nose.

>I don't think consciousness can be defined in terms of observing,
>noticing, knowing. Minsky's definition is, in my opinion, specifically
>cooked to make appear that machines are better than us in this regard.
>This is like a painter who uses a lot of green in his pictures defining
>beauty as the amount of green a picture has!

And the fact that we would reject the painter's definition shows that we
do have a notion of beauty that goes beyond mere greenness.  If it were 
true that we "don't have the least idea" what consciousness is, as you 
assert above, then there would be no way to criticize Minsky's definition 
(or anyone else's).

What do you feel is left out by defining consciousness in terms of 
observing or knowing?

>Asserting that consciousness must have a specific purpose implies taken
>for granted a certain materialistic point of view, and is by no means
>the only possibility.

One need not be a materialist to assume that consciousness has a purpose.
In most theistic systems, our consciousness presumably serves some purpose
of the gods.  In what systems does consciousness serve no purpose at all?
From: G.Joly@cs.ucl.ac.uk (Gordon Joly)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: What do I do with it?
Date: 4 Sep 92 10:24:06 GMT

choy@skorpio.usask.ca writes:
 > 
 > Let's say I want to build an intelligent machine. What's it to be
 > used for? Can this machine out its role in the universe?
 > 
 > Henry Choy
 > choy@cs.usask.c

Well, let's just say, for sake of argument, that it has already been
done.


Remember ``Deep Thought''?

Gordon,
____

Gordon Joly      Phone  +44 71 387 7050 ext 3703      FAX  +44 71 387 1397
Internet: G.Joly@cs.ucl.ac.uk        UUCP: ...!{uunet,uknet}!ucl-cs!G.Joly
Computer Science, University College London, Gower Street, LONDON WC1E 6BT
From: bill@nsma.arizona.edu (Bill Skaggs)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: what is consciousness for?
Date: 1 Sep 92 21:44:26 GMT
	<iordonez.715366473@academ01>
Organization: ARL Division of Neural Systems, Memory and Aging, University of
	Arizona

minsky@media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky) writes:

   > Then what might be the functions and the organs of what we call 
   > consciousness?  

The word "consciousness" is used in such a diversity of ways that it
is unreasonable to expect a single, concise answer to this question.

To a physician, consciousness is the state of not being asleep,
comatose, or dead.  The function of this kind of consciousness is
pretty clear:  if every human lacked it, humanity would not long
survive. 

I believe that one central notion of consciousness is (a) *having a
mental representation of the current state of the world*.  The
function of this kind of consciousness is less obvious, because many
of the things that could be done with a representation of the world
could also, in principle, be done by (so to speak) using the world as
a representation of itself.  The value of an internal representation
is to maintain information not immediately accessible to the senses,
and to make possible computations that could not be done using the
world itself.

A second, equally central, notion is (b) *being able to talk about
something*.  I am conscious of a pain in my head if, when asked
whether my head hurts, I say "yes".  This kind of consciousness is
intimately connected with language, and its value lies in
communication and in the structure that language confers on thought
and memory.

	-- Bill
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Subject: Re: Estimating intelligence
Organization: SPSS Inc.
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 18:17:52 GMT

In article <BILL.92Aug30205053@cortex.nsma.arizona.edu> bill@nsma.arizona.edu (Bill Skaggs) writes:
>I'd like to tell a little story that relates to this.

Thanks for doing so.  I like bear stories.

>In fact, I realized that it amounts to what Dennett would call a
>"demoting" act.  A large fraction of the apparent cleverness of bears
>can be accounted for by a very simple rule: "If you see a rope, chew
>on it."  Any food protection method that leaves the rope reachable
>will fall victim to this technique, and double-bagging is the only one
>that does not.  Note that the technique requires no understanding
>whatever of the *way* the rope supports the food -- all the bear needs
>to know is that chewing on ropes is a useful thing to do.

>And the moral of all this, I think, is that it's not so hard to create
>the appearance of more intelligence than actually exists.

I'm not sure your story lessens my estimate of bears' intelligence.
Perhaps the bears are relying on just one rule, but that only raises the 
question: where did they get that rule?  The bears have had to be 
adaptable enough to discover that garish-colored canvas sacks contain
food, and that chewing on ropes is a good strategy to get at sacks that
are out of reach.  I think that would be beyond a lot of animals.

Another interesting question is whether each bear has to learn the rule
for itself, or whether it can be communicated between bears (perhaps by
observation).  Also, how long did it take the bears to discover this
strategy?
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: stgprao@st.unocal.COM (Richard Ottolini)
Subject: Re: Checkers master beats computer
Organization: Unocal Corporation
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1992 20:00:00 GMT

In article <87846@netnews.upenn.edu> weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener) writes:
>In article <1992Aug30.195848.6377@unocal.com>, stgprao@st (Richard Ottolini) writes:
>>CBS news announced that the world checkers champ beat a computer 4-2 games.
>>I thought checkers was ceded to computers a couple decades ago because
>>those programs are easier to write than chess.
>
>So?  Qubic is perhaps the most complex game currently solved by computer.
>

I was under the impression that because checkers moves and strategies were
simpler to compute than chess, the computer can look ahead so far in the
game and basically win by brute force.  But human mind can still devise
strategies to defeat such a computation which is amazing to me. 

Brute force is the main technique in chess programs (examine a million+ moves
compared to a human looking at a hundred+).
But the possible moves and strategies is larger than checkers, so brute force
cant beat top people yet.

Do you have comparison measure of the complexity of chess versus cubic?
Some people claim GO is more complex than chess too.
From: weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Marvin Minsky's Conscious Machines
Date: 3 Sep 92 17:40:19 GMT
Reply-To: weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Organization: The Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology
In-reply-to: iordonez@academ01.mty.itesm.mx (Ivan Ordonez-Reinoso)

In article <iordonez.715293767@academ01>, iordonez@academ01 (Ivan Ordonez-Reinoso) writes:
>>>P: This sentence is not true.

>>>If senntence P were formalizable, it could be expressed in a logical
>>>finite formal system, which would require defining each of its elements.

>>Ways to formalize self-reference have been around for most of this
>>century.  Intuitively reasonable ones are new.  See, eg, Barwise and
>>Etchemendy(?) THE LIAR for two such.

>I don't know if this is supposed to prove that sentence P is formalizable,
>but anyway please note that in my original post I claimed that P is not
>formalizable because it contains a "not TRUE" part, and not because it
>is self referent. The concept "truth" is not formalizable.

Tarski's theorem is about the non-formalizability of a general truth
predicate.  It says nothing about particular instantiations of truth.
In particular, B&E show how to formalize "This sentence is true".

On a related note, Goedel's self-reference was indeed intuitively
reasonable, but it was limited in application.  So what I should have
said was that "intuitively reasonable, generally applicable" ones are
what is new.
-- 
-Matthew P Wiener (weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: tim@giaeb.cc.monash.edu.au (Tim Roberts)
Subject: the answer....
Organization: Monash University, Melb., Australia.
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1992 00:05:06 GMT

I have just obtained a copy of "Turbo C++ By Example", by Perry and Johnson,
1992.  I quote (p48):

Review Questions...

            3.  True or false: Computers can think.

(p728)  Chapter 3 Answers...

            3.  False

 Ah well, shame about that.  Marvin will be shattered.  We might as well close
 up this newsgroup now.....


-- 
Tim S Roberts
School of Applied Science                 tel:     051-226467
Monash University (Gippsland)             fax:     051-221348
Switchback Road
Churchill                                 email:   tim@giaeb.cc.monash.edu.au
Victoria 3842
Australia
Xref: sparky comp.ai.philosophy:5900 rec.arts.sf.misc:2733 alt.cyberpunk:4034
From: mimir@milton.u.washington.edu (Al Billings)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,rec.arts.sf.misc,alt.cyberpunk
Subject: Re: _The Turing Option_
Date: 28 Aug 92 18:45:52 GMT
Article-I.D.: u.1992Aug28.184552.7507
Organization: The Friends of Loki Society

In article <Btp8DC.4Fo.1@cs.cmu.edu> tp0x+@cs.cmu.edu (Thomas Price) writes:
>
>Context: Very soon before his crucifixion, while Jesus sat eating dinner, a 
>woman came in and washed his feet and anointed him with very expensive 
>ointment. Judas sniffed about what a waste it was, and how the ointment
>could have been sold and the money used for charitable purposes. (Judas
>was the treasurer of the little group and embezzled from their common 
>purse.) Jesus said, "The poor you always have with you, but me you don't."
>
>My understanding of his meaning is this: his life and work were a very special
>event, creating new possibilities. It was proper to celebrate and experience 
>them fully. This doesn't take away from the fact that it's appropriate to 
>perform acts of charity under ordinary circumstances.

 It meant the shyster knew someone was going to kill him for his bullshit
soon so wanted to enjoy the good life while he could.

 Just another interpretation.

Wassail,
Grendel

                           mimir@u.washington.edu
    /\  /\       +----------------------------------------+
   /__\/__\      | "I know that I hung on the windy tree  |          |
  /\  /\  /\     |  all of nights nine, wounded by Gar,   |          |
 /__\/__\/__\    |   given to Odhinn, myself to myself,   |          |
    /\  /\       | upon that tree of which none can tell  |          |
   /__\/__\      |      from what root it rises."         |    ______|______
                 +----------------------------------------+
Xref: sparky comp.ai.philosophy:5941 rec.arts.sf.misc:2790 alt.cyberpunk:4094
From: tp0x+@cs.cmu.edu (Thomas Price)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,rec.arts.sf.misc,alt.cyberpunk
Subject: Re: _The Turing Option_
Date: 2 Sep 92 15:33:57 GMT
Article-I.D.: cs.BtyJ8p.2KJ.1
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon

In article <8338@orbit.cts.com> anthro@pnet51.orb.mn.org (Paul Bramscher) writes:
>
>Already we're starting to hear terms pop up in American press such as
>"information rich" and "information poor".  No kidding....  Cyberpunks are
>information piss-poor people forced to use "underground" (non-legitimized)
>means to make life more liveable, maybe.
>        

Paul, what are you saying here? I don't get it. 

Say you want a revolution, you'd better free your mind instead. And you can
do that at a library, for heaven's sake. Any library. 

The fact that nobody does, and maybe four out of a hundred thousand people
can even conceive of what that might be like, is the real bottleneck.
But the information is there. In what ways are cyberpunks information-poor?
The only people I can think of who could be called information-poor are
people without basic reading skills or leisure to use them.

Tom

******************************************************************************
         Tom Price  |  tp0x@cs.cmu.edu  |  Simplicity, simplicity
******************************************************************************
Xref: sparky comp.ai.philosophy:5899 rec.arts.sf.misc:2732 alt.cyberpunk:4031
From: moravec@Think.COM (Hans Moravec)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,rec.arts.sf.misc,alt.cyberpunk
Subject: Re: _The Turing Option_
Date: 28 Aug 92 18:36:42 GMT
Distribution: world
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge MA, USA
NNTP-Posting-Host: turing.think.com

In article <1992Aug27.160940.6008@auto-trol.com>, stedee@auto-trol.com (Steve Deemer) writes:
|> In article <1992Aug26.192343.1144@kbsw1> chris@kbsw3.UUCP (Chris Kostanick 806 1044) writes:
|> >People today live longer and eat better than at any time in
|> >history. This is scarred and desolate?
|> >
|> >Chris Kostanick
|> >"Range, 1000 yards"
|> >
|> Some people do.  Some starve to death in the streets while others
|> watch on TV, then switch channels to watch re-runs of "Star Trek"
|> because it's not fun to watch people die.  I think that qualifies
|> as "scarred and desolate".

	Yes, television is at the heart of the problem.  In 1300, 50% of the
Aztecs could die of starvation caused by a war, and those of us in the rest
of the world could calmly go on with our lives, without any need to help,
or any guilt about it whatsoever.

	In 1990, in Somalia or Yugoslavia, rival gangs of the indigenous
population attack charitable contributions from strangers far away,
preventing help from getting to where it's most needed, and television
shows us the pictures, and all the rest of us are expected to feel guilty,
and to denigrate the success we've made of our own lives.

	You're right, technology is making things worse.  Let's get
rid of television.

				-- Hans Moravec
Xref: sparky comp.ai.philosophy:5911 rec.arts.sf.misc:2756 alt.cyberpunk:4049
From: cosc176t@menudo.uh.edu (Jason Asbahr)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,rec.arts.sf.misc,alt.cyberpunk
Subject: Re: _The Turing Option_
Date: 30 Aug 92 04:55:15 GMT
	<1992Aug26.192343.1144@kbsw1> <1992Aug27.160940.6008@auto-trol.com>
	<17lrnqINN91c@early-bird.think.com>
Organization: /posole/cosc176t/.organization


 Hans Moravec says:

>   You're right, technology is making things worse.  Let's get
>   rid of television.

I wouldn't mind getting rid of *most* of television, and changing
the nature of the rest.  An alarming (is it fashionable to be
alarmist?) portion of everyday television programming is fairly
mind-numbing stuff -- I try to avoid it whenever possible!

The daily news repeats so often, it's convenient to watch only
every other day, unless one hears of a really interesting event
somewhere in the world.  The *wonderful* thing about today's
incarnation of television is the ability to see things like
the celebration on top of the Berlin wall, while you sit
(or stand cheering) on the other side of the planet.

So, now that I'm complaining, what would I suggest?  Well, our
'net is pretty amazing all by itself...its chief advantage
over television is that it we can *respond* to it and through it...

Television would be truly useful if users could send Video mail,
watch and participate in both moderated and anarchic topic channels
(I'd love to see a few minutes of some of the projects mentioned
on comp.ai.philosophy!), even send fixed-time comment snippets to 
their local politicians...  (A nice trend of "electronic town hall
meetings" we're seeing this year...first with Perot, and then with 
Clinton...too bad it's not really participatory)...

It's not a new idea, but it's one that I'm getting tired of
waiting to see happen!  Perhaps with hardware JPEG or MPEG
(or something more exotic) and ISDN (which is technically
available in some parts of Houston, whatever barrier remains
is primarily bureaucratic) and 200+ MIP personal machines
(next year, if you don't mind living under a bridge until
you pay for it), it will happen soon.  

I wonder...  With limits on what PACs can donate, perhaps the
extra-padded ones would like to achieve similar effects by
funding a non-profit third party to install community "VideoBoxes"

--
Jason Asbahr                           116 E. Edgebrook #603
asbahr@uh.edu                          Houston, Texas  77034
next@tree.egr.uh.edu   (NeXTmail)      (713) 941-8294  voice (summer)
asbahr@tree.egr.uh.edu (NeXTmail)      UH NeXT Campus Consultant
Xref: sparky comp.ai.philosophy:5947 rec.arts.sf.misc:2807 alt.cyberpunk:4121
From: cascio@garnet.berkeley.edu (Jamais Cascio)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,rec.arts.sf.misc,alt.cyberpunk
Subject: 21st Century Soldier
Date: 3 Sep 1992 15:42:19 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
NNTP-Posting-Host: garnet.berkeley.edu


This was in sci.military, but is of definite relevance to this
newsgroup. 

I include all relevant posting information.

Article 21640 of sci.military:
Newsgroups: sci.military