From: cassidy@cps.msu.edu.cps.msu.edu (John J Cassidy)
Subject: Re: Psionics
Originator: cassidy@indian.cps.msu.edu
Reply-To: cassidy@cps.msu.edu.cps.msu.edu (John J Cassidy)
Organization: Dept. of Computer Science, Michigan State University
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 92 19:19:16 GMT

In article <1992Jul28.183601.12340@cs.yale.edu> heintzelman-george@CS.YALE.EDU (George Heintzelman) writes:
>In article <1992Jul28.164746.4299@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu> cassidy@indian.cps.msu.edu (John J Cassidy) writes:
>>In article <13742@mindlink.bc.ca> Nick_Janow@mindlink.bc.ca (Nick Janow) writes:
>>
>>	About life or sentient life being "special" being indentical to magic: 
>>we already know that there is something special about sentience, Scientists 
>>know it.  Perhaps we don't know in what exact way sentience is special. 
>>Perhaps there are special consequences to sentience in order to create all the 
>>effects that sentience requires?  

>	No. We do NOT know that sentience is special. We humans have a
>strong bias towards wanting to think that way, because we are sentient
>(or at least, we think we are. :),
	
	I understand the smile, but you should know that you could not
possibly by ARGUING this point, not in any stance that we can call
argument.  And then again all the talk about what is possible and what
is not possible is about as informative as a burp.  If you prefer to
regard your views and arguments as NOTHING but secretions of your brain,
then I waste my time speaking to you. :) 
 
>                                    but there is no accepted scientific
>evidence to suggest that sentience cannot be produced with the
>laborious application of the current physical model. 

	Now we get to a topic that *I* think is "handwaving", Artificial
Intelligence.  How could we, after programming a machine to be as
sentient as we can make it, judge its degree of sentience?  It could
have a vast problem-solving routine, with a vast bag of random items
that it could pull out based on the problem solving routines, so how could
we tell extremely low-probabilty of reaction from emergent behavior?
Isn't it possible that a failure in designing actual intelligence could
end up with a system that APPEARS so?
	And to your point: can you come up with conclusive evidence by
the scientific community that proves that ghosts don't exist?  No, you
can't.  You can only show me "disconfirming instances" of such
existence, i.e. debunking reports.  Therefore disconfirming instances
of AI are all that is required to believe that biological sentience may
indeed be special.  
	Disconfirming points: Have you ever seen a logic-ciruit that did
not require the advanced planning, and tons of labor to bring it into
the world?  Have you ever seen an operating system that works without
the programmer having to put all the problem resolutions into the
computer's "head".  How would we design a operating system that allowed
itself to be modified beyond those processes?  Yes, we can concieve that
such logic can be developed in the future.  But do we know along what
lines it will develop?  Ideas that a computer is a complex instrument
capable of near anything are 20th century superstition.  In reality a
computer is a designed tool, designed to do what it does.  Even programs
with limited AI/problem-solving require much of human-inputted knowledge
to run, and they all run to handle the problem at the user's bequest.
We have NO imperical evidence that such concepts are feasible.
	Going on what we have now, empirically, we must regard sentience
as special, or -- at least excuse yourself when you burp.

>                                                      If there were, it
>would be reason to tear down the physical model & work on a new one.
>
>>Any future investigation of science into this
>>would be its own science, proposing a new avenue of scientific investigation is
>>fair game for SF.  Do we really KNOW all the ways that science will evolve?
>>If this all seems like handwaving to you, you can ignore it.  But I would be   
>>interested in specific questions on this subject if you wish.
>
>	No, we don't know all the ways that science will evolve.
>However, anything postulated must not produce observations different
>from those currently well-known, within the limit of the accuaracy of
>those measurements. In hard SF, it must provide an explanation as to why we
>HAVEN'T observed it yet. 

See above section on disconfirming instances and AI...

>	Frankly, I've never seen a satifactorily done explanation of
>psi effects, by anyone. The relatively common '5th force' postulate
>falls down almost always because, in order not to be observed, it must
>be either 1) incredibly weak, and therefore useless (except in very
>sepcial circumstances, see above) 2) Incredibly short ranged (ie
>inside quarks) and therefore useless for macroscopic effects -- every
>macroscopic effect we have seen can be explained with quantum
>electrodynamics & general relativistic gravitation; or 3) Effective
>only between rare types of particles, and therefore again, generally
>useless.
>
	Right away, I'll admit that I'm no physicist.  But let me ask
about SuperStrings: what are they?  I mean not a description, but what
are they made of?  They are what they are, like quanta.  You can't even
say for them that they are made of quanta, because, as I last understood
it, quanta are a particular representation of a superstring, they are
the Flatland version of a superstring.  By some superstring theory,
quantum effects can be explained because the effect does not have to be
local -- which by the way is a big part of the assumptions that
Scientists make about cause and effect.  Yes taken to this extent
psionics do pose to make the world something other that what current
20th century scientists believe it to be, but 20th century science is SO
different to what 18th or 19th century scientists expected it to be.
Whether or not it makes it acceptable SF is something each person has to
judge.

>George Heintzelman
>
>Ignore the above address, its just where I read news...email should be
>sent to heintzel@cernapo.cern.ch
>