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yovargas
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Posted: Mon 23 Jul , 2007 8:59 pm
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The Watcher wrote:
yovargas wrote:
What possible evolutionary benefit is there to a perception of free will if we're really just uber-fancy robots?
Why aren't we just watching the movie of our own lives?
I guess I would counter your question with why you see free will as something that has been bestowed on us, rather than merely a part of having self-awareness/a sense of time/memory.

:scratch: Did I say they were? I don't have any idea whether they are or not.
The core of my ideas come simply from science still having nothing to handle the idea of matter aware of itself nor the idea of choices.


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The Watcher
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Posted: Mon 23 Jul , 2007 9:48 pm
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yovargas wrote:
The Watcher wrote:
yovargas wrote:
What possible evolutionary benefit is there to a perception of free will if we're really just uber-fancy robots?
Why aren't we just watching the movie of our own lives?
I guess I would counter your question with why you see free will as something that has been bestowed on us, rather than merely a part of having self-awareness/a sense of time/memory.

:scratch: Did I say they were? I don't have any idea whether they are or not.
The core of my ideas come simply from science still having nothing to handle the idea of matter aware of itself nor the idea of choices.
But science does not claim to answer all things. There is your answer. Now you struggle along like the rest of us. :) I am not being snarky or blunt, I am only letting you know that this is where things like science more or less break down.

I will hazzard a guess to your query based on your own field of college studies. When will enough programming be built into a computer to allow it to grow beyond its programming? It is sort of like the chicken or egg question. At some time in the not too distant future, we will have such things as AI. I have no doubt about it. It may be contributed by humans successfully conveying their own understanding of "free will" and acting accordingly, but it will still exist. While that does not answer the question of where our own "free will " itself was derived from, maybe it was something akin to that whole scenario - maybe it is an inevitable result of learning that there are choices.

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yovargas
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Posted: Mon 23 Jul , 2007 10:17 pm
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I am strongly doubtful that we will ever create a machine that has something that we could genuinely call "intelligence". I am even more certain that we will never create a machine that has something that we could call "emotions".


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Crucifer
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Posted: Mon 23 Jul , 2007 11:00 pm
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I agree with Yov. For one thing, the amount of neural connections needed for intelligence is massive.
For emotions, you need glands, which machines don't have, and I don't know how one would synthesise them.

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elfshadow
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Posted: Tue 24 Jul , 2007 12:05 am
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Crucifer wrote:
For emotions, you need glands, which machines don't have, and I don't know how one would synthesise them.

You don't really need the glands to produce emotions, just the hormones they release, such as epinephrine (AKA adrenaline)--along with neurotransmitters such as acetylcholine, dopamine, seratonin, etc. These are simply chemicals and can certainly be isolated. It may be possible to create a computer that releases these chemicals at the result of light, touch, or other electrical stimuli. The problem is that fully experiencing the emotions generally utilizes bodily effects like sweating, heart pounding, physical pleasure, etc--and computers don't usually have that.

More importantly, the human brain and its nerves are so complex that there are literally trillions of electrical connections between all the neurons in the nervous system. Computers' electrical impulses move a lot faster than ours do, which is why they are so good at number crunching, but our brains are infinitely more complicated. I suppose it is theoretically possible to create a supercomputer with as many electrical connections as the human body has, but I'm not sure it would ever be finished.

That's the main obstacle I see to creating a computer with intelligence and emotions. It seems to me that ultimately, our own intelligence, emotions, and even awareness are all the result of exceptional hardwiring.


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yovargas
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Posted: Tue 24 Jul , 2007 12:07 am
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Quote:
That's the main obstacle I see to creating a computer with intelligence and emotions.
No! The biggest problem is that we have no idea what those things are!


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elfshadow
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Posted: Tue 24 Jul , 2007 12:19 am
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yovargas wrote:
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That's the main obstacle I see to creating a computer with intelligence and emotions.
No! The biggest problem is that we have no idea what those things are!

I don't know that it's true that we have no idea at ALL what they are. If you're thinking philosophically, I guess maybe we don't. But biologically, scientists and researchers have done--and are doing--an awful lot of work to determine what what's going on in the brain and the body when we experience emotions, and what abilities humans have that give us cognitive ability, rationality, problem-solving skills, etc. that we use to define intelligence. If you have a different idea of what emotions and intelligence are, I'd really like to hear your views! Often in research, scientists have to use "operational definitions" to try to get closer and closer to defining what a thing actually is without really defining it. But I think that eventually, scientists may very well develop the capabilities to simulate how the human mind and body work using machines. And of course, they may not. But in any case, I think neuroscience and its implications are a really fascinating study, from the little that I know of it I think it's truly amazing how much is actually known about the brain--and how much more there is to learn.


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yovargas
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Posted: Tue 24 Jul , 2007 12:25 am
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Whenever I read about neurologists studying the brain, it tends to sound to me like someone trying to figure out how a computer works by pushing buttons on a keyboard. :)


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elfshadow
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Posted: Tue 24 Jul , 2007 12:30 am
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Er, maybe because that's what the brain is sort of like? :P :D


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yovargas
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Posted: Tue 24 Jul , 2007 12:55 am
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Exactly! The brain is a keyboard but where's the CPU!? And who keeps pushing all the buttons?? :D


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elfshadow
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Posted: Tue 24 Jul , 2007 12:58 am
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The brain is the CPU, the keyboard is the senses. And it's the world around us that is pushing the buttons. ;)


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yovargas
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Posted: Tue 24 Jul , 2007 1:06 am
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I know that's the standard materialist view. I disagree. :)
(Mainly because it doesn't explain or acknowledge the incredible mistery of self-awareness.)


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Axordil
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Posted: Tue 24 Jul , 2007 1:27 am
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For a long time science couldn't explain the wonderful mystery of rainbows either. Or the morning dew. Or lightning and thunder. And then, science could. As I said before, I wouldn't call the phenomena of consciousness, or self-awareness, or free will as well-defined in terms of purely physical explanations as the above. But neither do I think they should be pulled off the empirical table and made axiomatic, or rendered unfalsifiable. They're being looked at. Answers will come--even if those answers are just more pieces of the puzzle for a while. It has taken years to get this far, and it will take years more to get to the bottom of it.

Material and empirical things can remain unexplained for some time without requiring non-material explanations. Just about forever, in my book, but you know me. :) What's more, a single lifetime can and does see changes in what is even deemed knowable. Witness the years 1880-1950, which took us from the ether to nukes. That's threescore and ten years--a lifetime. Or consider my great-grandfather, born 1890, died 1986. He saw the Wright brothers and the moon landings.

In terms of the study of human cognition, we're still in cloth-covered biplanes. But we're off the ground.

BTW--if you ever doubt the complexity of the human brain, watch a computer try to puzzle out visual data and figure out what objects ARE. Even the ones designed for it suck by comparison to two-year olds. Pattern recognition (as the Galaxy Quest people know) is done better by human minds than by supercomputers.

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yovargas
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Posted: Tue 24 Jul , 2007 1:55 am
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Quote:
For a long time science couldn't explain the wonderful mystery of rainbows either. Or the morning dew. Or lightning and thunder. And then, science could.
Indeed. But until science has something better than :shrug: I can postulate all the wacky crap I want. :D
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As I said before, I wouldn't call the phenomena of consciousness, or self-awareness, or free will as well-defined in terms of purely physical explanations as the above. But neither do I think they should be pulled off the empirical table and made axiomatic, or rendered unfalsifiable.
It's just that...free will...it's practicably untestable by definition. I just...I think that literally it is impossible to prove one way or the other. So you either assume that it's real, false, or :shrug:. I don't think there's much more that can be done.


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Axordil
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Posted: Tue 24 Jul , 2007 2:40 am
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I'm not so sure. Even perusing something as superficial as Wikipedia shows that there are useful scientific questions one can formulate around the issue, which is usually the case when something can't be examined directly.

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Destiny is a rhythm track on which we must improvise.

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Crucifer
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Posted: Tue 24 Jul , 2007 10:52 am
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The way I see it is this.

I believe that the soul is the immortal bit that makes me me. When my mortal body decides to kick the bucket, that bit goes to heaven to meet my maker.

If I'm right, great.
If I'm wrong, it doesn't make any difference whatsoever.

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yovargas
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Posted: Tue 24 Jul , 2007 2:00 pm
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Axordil wrote:
I'm not so sure. Even perusing something as superficial as Wikipedia shows that there are useful scientific questions one can formulate around the issue, which is usually the case when something can't be examined directly.
wiki wrote:
Related experiments showed that neurostimulation could affect which hands people move, even though the experience of free will was intact. Ammon and Gandevia found that it was possible to influence which hand people move by stimulating frontal regions that are involved in movement planning using transcranial magnetic stimulation in either the left or right hemisphere of the brain.[69] Right-handed people would normally choose to move their right hand 60% of the time, but when the right hemisphere was stimulated they would instead choose their left hand 80% of the time. Despite the external influence on their decision-making, the subjects continued to report that they believed their choice of hand had been made freely.
Fascinating stuff. But what does it really say? What that sort of thing means depends on what assumptions one chooses to make.

It reminds me, somewhat tangentially, of the old question - if god made humans, than who made god. You can keep pushing that questino back towards infinity or stop wherever you want on that chain.


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MariaHobbit
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Posted: Tue 24 Jul , 2007 2:32 pm
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The soul is like a finger of the higher self that reaches into this limited 4 dimensional reality (from it's pan dimensional perspective) and operates the flesh of the body. It's the spark that makes the flesh run. It's "anti-entropy".

Through this connection to the higher self, one can get glimpses of the future since time is just another dimension to them. And one can pull in extra energy into this dimension through that connection for unusual purposes.

When the flesh dies, the "finger" retracts back to it's owner and the experience is ... experienced. The small "me" will reintegrate with the bigger ME and hopefully my performance in the little "mortal life" game will be a cool thing. Maybe even to be repeated, if it was fun enough. :shrug:

Of course, one could simplify that explanation into "die, go to heaven and be judged and/or rewarded" but I just can't bend my mind that way. ;)
Watcher wrote:
Free will allows us to use what we are given and do good things with them.
Wow! Thank you! :love: That helps me with something I've been worrying about. :)

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Axordil
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Posted: Tue 24 Jul , 2007 3:08 pm
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Quote:
You can keep pushing that question back towards infinity or stop wherever you want on that chain.
Not all infinite regressions are unbounded. Witness Zeno. I think the chain of causal events that lead to a decision fade back into the rest of our life experience, such that we can make decisions quickly and unconsciously--and then justify them. :) Or, in some cases, we can stop the unconscious decision process (an unconscious decision in itself, and one which we have to have some life experience to be able to make) to mull things over consciously.

If you push self-awareness hard enough, it goes away. That's been demonstrated: the area of the cortex required for self-awareness is known (the superior frontal gyrus) and when you require people to act quickly enough in decision making, activity in that part of the brain dies off temporarily. At that point we're not thinking about what we're doing, we're just doing it.

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Destiny is a rhythm track on which we must improvise.

In some cases, firing the drummer helps.


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Dave_LF
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Posted: Sat 18 Aug , 2007 5:11 pm
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You have your run-of-the-mill people who believe in a young Earth because they take Genesis literally, and then you have your true heroes of the movement:
Quote:
Last week, Bill Nye (The Science Guy) gave a talk at McLennan Community College in Waco, TX. Everything went well at first, until…

The Emmy-winning scientist angered a few audience members when he criticized literal interpretation of the biblical verse Genesis 1:16, which reads: “God made two great lights — the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars.”

He pointed out that the sun, the “greater light,” is but one of countless stars and that the “lesser light” is the moon, which really is not a light at all, rather a reflector of light.

A number of audience members left the room at that point, visibly angered by what some perceived as irreverence.

“We believe in a God!” exclaimed one woman as she left the room with three young children.
http://www.ocellated.com/2006/04/13/bill-nye-in-waco/


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