urth-urth.net Digest, Vol 5, Issue 41

turin · 27 Jan 2005, 18:16 · from 2005-January.txt.gz

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From: turin at HELL.COM (turin)
Date: Thu Jan 27 18:16:34 2005
Subject: (urth) Re: urth-urth.net Digest, Vol 5, Issue 41
Message-ID: <20050128021632.7C65F395A at sitemail.everyone.net>

turing called it the imitation game.

it is not enough for a machine to produce the same outputs as a person, it must arrive at its outputs in the same fashion, that is whatever the functional apparatus, it must have the same cognition and intentional and phenomenal states as a person. the machine would obviously have to have a certain degree of self recursion or sentience, and something which resembles linear consciousness, it is debatable whether there is any other kind. the imitation game taken literally is the same kind of reductionism as behaviorism.  and turing was really just talking about how we identity other people, especially under certain circumstances.  the test itself was just the "chinese room", but i wont explain that here.  om short, turing is just the jumping off point for cognitive science.  for a mahine to be a person it has to have, and in the 40s and 50s this was a taboo subject in psychology, a mind.  the rigidity of your criteria for cognition and and whether phenomenal states or emotions are even meccesary are something else entirely.  "creativity" is just a way to describe solving complex problems when there is incomplete information, indefinite goals, or both.  most "real world" problems are like this.  what we really  mean is that the machine will have to be flexible and proficient in a wide variety of tasks.  it also means that the machine will have to be self correcting, possess learning algorithms, and that it will be able to reset its own goals, though its programming would not have to be completely transparent or malleable to itself.  ours arent.  i'd love ot be able to reset some of my goals.  EOT;

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