Political Crossfire Forums

[The Comrade]

criticalstriker wrote: What is the diffrence between the brain and a computer? ones made of metal and the other tissue? its true that no computer to date has been NEAR the power of the human brain, but why couldent we replicate the signals both chemical and elctrical what would be the diffrence it would be a "brain" but an Artificial one aka a computer.

try reading a tenth grade biology book to see how different the brain and a computer chip are.

[Green]

tman_ndsu08 wrote: Green wrote:

Think of this on a logial point. There is no such thing as free thought. The only reason ou think of somthing is because of a chemical reaction, that was caused by environmental stimuli. According to the chaos theory, everything has a cause, nothing is not because a cause. If you were to calculate every atom in the universe and its movement and destination and how atoms would be affected by the current action, then you would be able to predict the future.

Not so fast there professor.


You're assuming that the universe is deterministic. That is not known at the moment.


There may be particle in the universe whose movement is impossible to characterize by any equation.

If those particles exist, then you can never predict the future. If you can never predict the future, free thoughts are possible.

We can leave that to the physicists.

[MplsBison]

Actually a physicist named Heisenberg already figured out that if you observe a particles momentum or position, you change the other.

So we can never really know if the universe is deterministic or not.


So, as long as we can't know, the possibility for free thought still exists.

[MplsBison]

criticalstriker wrote: What is the diffrence between the brain and a computer? ones made of metal and the other tissue? its true that no computer to date has been NEAR the power of the human brain, but why couldent we replicate the signals both chemical and elctrical what would be the diffrence it would be a "brain" but an Artificial one aka a computer.

Brain = ability to give output without a given input.

Computer = only can give output with a given input.


Whether it's made out of tissue or metal doesn't matter.


If you're asking whether or not we can make a brain from transistors, the answer is unknown. I doubt it, though.

[criticalstriker]

Brain = ability to give output without a given input.

Computer = only can give output with a given input.



Your some what wrong on that humans cant just give out put with out in put. if you were raised your whole life with out any input from your parents school ect, you would be like a zombie you couldent talk you would learn to walk at a much older age you would be inept at everything thing, thus unable to out put

[THEXRATED]

tman_ndsu08 wrote: Actually a physicist named Heisenberg already figured out that if you observe a particles momentum or position, you change the other.

So we can never really know if the universe is deterministic or not.

So, as long as we can't know, the possibility for free thought still exists.

Yet, we know that processes that govern the universe are not all random (do not mix random with free, random can be predictable and thus deterministic). The major process in universe is of course gravity. The processes by which gravity guides the universe are well known.

Chess game is another good example:

"Strategy games like chess and especially, with its simple deterministic rules, can have an extremely large number of unpredictable moves. By analogy, "emergentists" suggest that the experience of free will emerges from the interaction of finite rules and deterministic parameters that generate infinite and unpredictable behaviour. Yet, if all these events were accounted for, and there were a known way to evaluate these events, the seemingly unpredictable behavior would become predictable.

Source: Psychological Review. 110(1), Jan 2003, 3-28 - Dynamical evolutionary psychology: Individual decision rules and emergent social norms"

[MplsBison]

criticalstriker wrote:
if you were raised your whole life with out any input from your parents school ect, you would be like a zombie you couldent talk you would learn to walk at a much older age you would be inept at everything thing, thus unable to out put

This is incorrect.

Try searching "Hellen Keller".

[MplsBison]

THEXRATED wrote:

Yet, we know that processes that govern the universe are not all random (do not mix random with free, random can be predictable and thus deterministic). The major process in universe is of course gravity. The processes by which gravity guides the universe are well known.


First of all, the definition of random is that you can not determine the future based on the past.

If you can determine the future, then it's not random.

Second, there are 4 fundamental forces in the universe (gravity, EM, and the nuclear forces). The 3 non gravity forces are all much stronger than gravity.


Even still, assuming know know all 4 forces perfectly, we still can't predict much, if anything, usefully.

[THEXRATED]

Quote: First of all, the definition of random is that you can not determine the future based on the past.

If you can determine the future, then it's not random.

You have your very own definition of random.

Perhaps you should take a minute or two to familiarize yourself with the subject.

[cap'n queasy]

THEXRATED wrote: Quote: First of all, the definition of random is that you can not determine the future based on the past.

If you can determine the future, then it's not random.

You have your very own definition of random.

Perhaps you should take a minute or two to familiarize yourself with the subject.

From your link.
Quote: A random process is a repeating process whose outcomes follow no describable deterministic pattern, but follow a probability distribution.

[criticalstriker]

tman_ndsu08 wrote: criticalstriker wrote:
if you were raised your whole life with out any input from your parents school ect, you would be like a zombie you couldent talk you would learn to walk at a much older age you would be inept at everything thing, thus unable to out put

This is incorrect.

Try searching "Hellen Keller".

Its true that she didint have sight or hearing but she had touch and that is a form of input, every time you touch your nerves send signals to your brain this is "input" to the brain.

[THEXRATED]

cap'n queasy wrote: THEXRATED wrote: Quote: First of all, the definition of random is that you can not determine the future based on the past.

If you can determine the future, then it's not random.

You have your very own definition of random.

Perhaps you should take a minute or two to familiarize yourself with the subject.

From your link.
Quote: A random process is a repeating process whose outcomes follow no describable deterministic pattern, but follow a probability distribution.

Oh Cap, you never cease to amaze me with the lenght of your sillyness.

My post was in reply to:

Quote: First of all, the definition of random is that you can not determine the future based on the past.

If you can determine the future, then it's not random.

[MplsBison]

criticalstriker wrote:

Its true that she didint have sight or hearing but she had touch and that is a form of input, every time you touch your nerves send signals to your brain this is "input" to the brain.

True.


We're going off into an irrelevent point, though.


I can give a computer senses.

I can hook up a digital thermometer to it, for example.


But a computer can only do with that information what I tell it to do.

It can't decide if the information means it's hot or cold outside unless I tell it that hot = X degrees or higher. Etc.


A brain can take that information and give output outside the parameters of the input.

[MplsBison]

THEXRATED wrote:

My post was in reply to:

Quote: First of all, the definition of random is that you can not determine the future based on the past.

If you can determine the future, then it's not random.

What I said is the same thing as what cap quoted.

[Rozzlapeed]

Instead of debating whether or not its possible to create a computer with artificial intelligence, I'd just like to point out that it's likely that we'll see computer-augmented intelligence before we see artificial intelligence. Technology alone will never create true artificial intelligence. It will only be able to take that step once medicine and neuroscience come to a full understanding of human thought. But on the other side of the equation, the technology for creating human-computer neural interfaces is rapidly developing.

[THEXRATED]

tman_ndsu08 wrote: THEXRATED wrote:

My post was in reply to:

Quote: First of all, the definition of random is that you can not determine the future based on the past.

If you can determine the future, then it's not random.

What I said is the same thing as what cap quoted.

Cap's quote was pretty irrelevant and you would know that if you would actuall spend few minutes to read the who article there.

Quote: If you can determine the future, then it's not random.

Key word here is predictability. More accurate you get with your predictions, closer you get to determine the results.

Quote: ]First of all, the definition of random is that you can not determine the future based on the past.

This is not a definition of random.

[MplsBison]

Rozzlapeed wrote: the technology for creating human-computer neural interfaces is rapidly developing.

I agree with this.

I can see the day where humans can have wireless computers installed in their bodies and hooked directly into their brains. They would simply think "who was the 2nd president" and the computer will search the internet and the data will be able to be accessed by the mind through the interface. Etc.

[MplsBison]

THEXRATED wrote:

Cap's quote was pretty irrelevant

It was exactly relevant. He showed in your own article how you were wrong.

Quote:

Key word here is predictability. More accurate you get with your predictions, closer you get to determine the results.

So being 95% correct on the future is good enough?

No. That's not deterministic. Not even close.

Don't care if it's 99.99999% correct.

It would certainly be useful to have that kind of accuracy, but that still not the same thing as a deterministic future.

Quote:

This is not a definition of random.

It's the exact definition of random, as cap showed above.

[agentkgb]

I doubt an actual AI could ever be created but if one were it would have rights, if it made money it would have to pay its taxes, and all its e-mails would be monitored.

[THEXRATED]

Quote: It's the exact definition of random, as cap showed above.

All Cap did was provide a quote of single sentence from a source I provided failing to take in account all the other points said in that source.

Like just below of his quote are the following minor points:

"The term randomness is often used in statistics to signify well defined statistical properties, such as lack of bias or correlation. Random is different from arbitrary, because to say that a variable is random means that the variable follows a probability distribution. Arbitrary on the other hand implies that there is no such determinable probability distribution for the variable."

"...Hidden variable theories attempt to escape the view that nature contains irreducible randomness: such theories posit that in the processes that appear random, unobservable (hidden) properties with a certain statistical distribution are somehow at work behind the scenes, determining the outcome in each case" - relating to physics

And then the part where they actually discuss the issue of randomness versus unpredictability

Quote: Randomness is an objective property. Nevertheless, what appears random to one observer may not appear random to another observer. Consider two observers of a sequence of bits, only one of which who has the cryptographic key needed to turn the sequence of bits into a readable message. The message is not random, but is for one of the observers unpredictable.

One of the intriguing aspects of random processes is that it is hard to know whether the process is truly random. The observer can always suspect that there is some "key" that unlocks the message. This is one of the foundations of superstition.

Under the cosmological hypothesis of determinism there is no randomness in the universe, only unpredictability.

Some mathematically defined sequences exhibit some of the same characteristics as random sequences, but because they are generated by a describable mechanism they are called pseudo-random. To an observer who does not know the mechanism, the pseudo-random sequence is unpredictable.

Chaotic systems are unpredictable in practice due to their extreme dependence on initial conditions. Whether or not they are unpredictable in terms of computability theory is a subject of current research. At least in some disciplines of computability theory the notion of randomness turns out to be identified with computational unpredictability.

It is important to remember that phenomena that are random in some respects may be precisely characterizable in other respects. Quantum mechanics allows a very precise calculation of the half-lives of atoms even though the process of atomic decay is a random one. Ohm's law and the kinetic theory of gases are precise characterizations of macroscopic phenomena which are random on the microscopic level.

Random is not truly random in the sense of the word. For a random outcome to occur there must be at least one variable which changes each time the event is repeated or else the same outcome will always occur. However variables influence the outcome of an event and the more variables there are the more contorted the end result will be. Random is applied to a situation where the end result cannont accurately be guessed because of the number of influencing variables.