X-Message-Number: 12576
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: more on my discussion of Kurzweil's book
Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 13:39:47 +1000 (EST)

Hi to everyone!

I want to repeat something I said in my messages about emotion and 
other brain processing. I said, I hope clearly, that I was criticising
Kurzweil for not even mentioning that subject, when it was clear to me
that a computer without values (which come from our emotions and feelings)
would just be a hyperintelligent hyperslave.

And so quite a number of people don't really notice that point. I was NOT
claiming that computers with values and emotions could not be built. I
was NOT even claiming that hyperintelligent computers could not be built.
I was criticising one author for his omission of any discussion at all on
the issue of emotions and values of his proposed hyperintelligent
computers.

There have also been several people trying to reply to me with their own
ideas about how computers might already have values. This is all very
well, but remains irrelevant as a criticism of Kurzweil's ideas (at least
as given in his book). Not only that, but if some of you think that the 
values and emotions will come automatically to an intelligent computer, 
you've advanced a bit farther than Kurzweil, who simply fails to discuss the
issue. (I will add, PARENTHETICALLY, that I don't find that point at all
obvious: it needs much more argument, at least). For that matter, those
who do believe that values and emotions come automatically with intelligence, 
AND like Kurzweil's book, are simply mistaken. They're attributing to 
Kurzweil their own opinion on this issue. And if those of you who think
this can find where KURZWEIL expresses that opinion in this book, please
send me the Chapter and page.

And yes, it is because I believe that intelligence and values are seperate
that I doubt strongly that computers, no matter how intelligent we may
make them, will take over. One commentator on my messages seemed to
believe that I had no evidence that computers didn't already have
feelings; we might always suppose that even our present computers
carefully hide their feelings from us, but that seems to me to be a 
belief bordering on the insane or the religious. Among its problems, it
gives us no handle to prove it right or wrong.

			Best wishes and long long life to all,

				Thomas Donaldson

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