X-Message-Number: 11480 From: Date: Sun, 28 Mar 1999 22:33:14 EST Subject: I married a computer In a recent issue of the NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS there is a review by philosopher John Searle of computer innovator Ray Kurzweil's book, THE AGE OF SPIRITUAL MACHINES, subtitled WHEN COMPUTERS EXCEED HUMAN INTELLIGENCE (Viking, 1999). Searle's review is captioned "I Married a Computer." As it turns out, some people literally have married computers--because at one time the word "computer" meant a person who does computations. I might add that many people have married typewriters--because at one time the word "typewriter" meant what we now call "typist." The main thrust of Kurzweil's book is that computer speed and storage will increase enormously (no argument there), that we will learn exactly how brains think and feel (few will argue this either), and therefore computers will be able to do everything human brains do, and do it faster and better. One asserted consequence is that we will have the option of "uploading" ouselves "into" computers. Searle's review is mostly a reprise of his rejection of the thesis that present-style computers are or can be "intelligent," let alone conscious. So who is right? Neither. Both discussions are seriously flawed. Kurzweil does in a couple of spots acknowledge that we may not know for sure whether a computer is conscious, but he thinks we will believe it when it says it is. He also says that knowledge of a computer's internal workings will not tell us whether it is conscious. This is wrong, at least one side of it. When we learn the anatomy and physiology of human feeling, then the presence of something similar in another entity will be a good indication of consciousness in that entity. After all, that is why we assume consciousness in other people--they are similar to us, and we know we are conscious. Lack of similarity, on the other hand, might or might not disprove consciousness, depending on what we learn about the requirements of consciousness. Maybe one day some kind of radio-telepathy will come into play, so individuals can share subjectivity. Searle does not deny that machines can think and feel. We are machines (I prefer to say "mechanisms") and we think and feel. But he denies that present- style computers, regardless of speed or storage capacity, can "think" at all or "know" anything, because they do nothing but manipulate symbols which have no internal semantic content. Isomorphism is not everything; the map is not the territory; a computer simulation of the digestive process will not actually digest food. Of course, the strong AI people and uploaders will retort that a simulated digestive process will indeed perform digestion--of simulated food for simulated people. But they are simply reiterating their mantra that isomorphism indeed IS everything, that nothing matters except development of patterns of information, the "information paradigm"--an unproven article of faith, moderately plausible but no more than that. Searle's blind spot seems to be his failure to notice that many of the signals in our brains are "merely" symbols of certain events or conditions, either external or in other parts of the brain. Yet we use the feedbacks, along with trial-and-error, to build a picture of the external world; we build a mental world with semantic content, using mere symbols (in conjunction with our self- circuits or subjective circuits, which are not yet identified). Of course, we don't start from scratch as babies; we have a head start through the gifts of previous evolution, with many propensities hard-wired in right off the bat. With enough understanding, the same could be done for computers. As for Kurzweil's sins, they appear to be mainly those of sloppiness and hurry. Doubtless his book was just one of many projects on his agenda, and perhaps he didn't do much review or revision. Searle catches him in various errors and failures as an expository writer. One gross error which I did not notice Searle mention was Kurzweil's repeated statement--conveyed as fact, not minority opinion--that quantum decoherence requires a CONSCIOUS observer, not just an interaction. (For example, Schroedinger's cat remains in a superposition of dead/alive states until some outside conscious observer takes a look; and in fact the whole universe was in limbo until conscious observers caused its whole history retroactively to gel.) As far as I recall, neither Kurzweil in this book nor Searle in various writings have dealt with David Deutsch's put-down of Turing computers (including all present digital computers)--that they are classical, while the real world is quantum. Can a classical system simulate events in a quantum world? To some extent, obviously yes, since scientists do use computers, and even hand calculations, to derive quantum results, and the rules of quantum mechanics now in use are written in classical language. But one suspects that any attempt actually to emulate a person, or a significant part of the real world, with a Turing machine would sooner or later run into insuperable problems, if indeed there were not insuperable conceptual problems at the outset, as I have discussed elsewhere. And yet again, does all this, or any of it, bear on the real problems of ordinary people? The answer, however unwelcome, is a flat yes. Ordinary people are not compelled to try to understand such esoteric matters--but the alternative is to accept the dicta of authority, which leaves you with the almost equally difficult problem of choosing the most authoritative authority, and then deciding which dicta are the important ones. There are no cheap and easy answers. If you want to understand the choices in life and death, you have to pay attention and do your best to make intelligent bets. Nature has neither malice nor mercy. Freeze, please. Robert Ettinger Cryonics Institute Immortalist Society http://www.cryonics.org Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=11480