On Aug 16, 12:05Â pm, Jan Panteltje
yahoo.com> wrote:> On a sunny day (Sat, 16 Aug 2008 09:12:57 -0700 (PDT)) it happened Jerry Kraus
>
yahoo.com> wrote in
> m73g2000hsh.googlegroups.com>:
>>>On Aug 16, 11:02Â am, Jan Panteltje
yahoo.com> wrote:>>> On a sunny day (Sat, 16 Aug 2008 10:00:10 -0500) it happened John
>>> wrote in <18-dnVwozvoYdjvVnZ2dnUVZ_r7in...@supernews.=
>>com>:
>
>>> As to 'mystic' and ,consciousness,, well 'mysticism' will have to go,
>>> if we look to the past, where the earth was at the centre of the universe=
>>, and
>>> the sun and stars orbiting around it, we will now have to give up on the =
>>idea
>>> that 'we' are special, we are controlled by just a larger collection of n=
>>eurons.
>
>>Spendid. Â So why do you care?
>
> There is more to neural nets then I can explain here in a reasonable size posting.
> There is much more to 'neurons', and our current software model of those neurons
> needs fixing.
> I find understanding our selves, our nature, and nature, a facinating enterprise,
> And we need to.
>
>> Â And why bother studying it at all? Â If
>>all we are is a few utterly meaningless electrochemical connections.
>
> Well, if _you_ call yourself meaningless is not anybody else's problem.
> That would be as dumb as saying: 'Because the earth is not at the centre
> of the solar system we are all meaningless'.
> Makes no sense to me.
> Nature is beautiful, it is, in a way, 'mechanical', our understanding
> is limited, but growing, will there be an end? (for us) I think not.
>
>>And, by the way, why haven't we made more progress in Artificial
>>Intelligence by this time?
>
> For the reasons I just mentioned, and 'artificial' intelligence is a bad word ;-)
> We need _real_ intelligence, and so what is that according to you?
>
>>No computer comes remotely close to human
>>intelligence except in extremely narrowly defined activities like
>>chess.
>
> Chess is a dumb example, it is 100%% methodical, some of those very good
> chess programs have old games programmed in them (look at the source of GNU chess for example).
> Chess has nothing to do with intelligence, the fact you waste your time with it proves that.
If you accept that knowledge is limitless -- or may well be, in any
case -- then what is your objection to "mysticism"? Generally, what
people mean by "mysticism" is simply trying to find new ways of
looking at things. And how do you know that everything is
"mechanical"? As far as that goes, what do you mean by "mechanical"?
Most likely, you mean in terms of currently understood structures like
neurons.
For all we know, our brains may be linked to some universal
consciousness spreading beyond the stars, which we currently have no
understanding of. Who knows?
