X-Message-Number: 27592
From: "Jordan Sparks" <>
Subject: RE: Intelligent blob
Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2006 12:11:01 -0800

>>But the 'general intelligence' of 
this architecture is limited. Eventually, once you have tweaked all 
you can tweak, it will not be possible to further increase the 
intelligence of an individual having this architecture.
 
Oh, really?  You know that for a fact, do you?  Give me a break.  Nobody
knows enough about the brain to be able to say it can't be augmented.  I
certainly think that some highly focused engineering can result in some
wonderful augmentation.  I see no reason at all why vast memory storage
can't become the norm.  Our own associative memory does not need to be
changed one bit to do this. Input could come through communication with our
optic nerves, or at an even higher level in our visual cortex.   There are
all sorts of other input paths that could be utilized, such as sound and
touch.  Output could be through the nerve fibers that currently control our
tongue, lips, face, vocal chords, and fingers.  None of this is very
outlandish.  I thought it was all very obvious.  Why on earth do you think
we can't do this?
 
>>I imagine there is some amount of 
scaling that can be done with our existing architecture, but not 
much before the size poses problems that require radically 
different architecture to solve; for example, signaling delays).
 
Not until my blob is a few hundred thousand times larger would signaling
delays even begin to be an issue.

>>A pattern doesn't exist, Jordan. A pattern isn't matter or energy. 
By believing in the existence of something that's not matter or 
energy, you have become a supernaturalist. 
 
No amount of philosophical hand waving is going to change the fact that my
computer program exists.  I am an objectivist.  To insist that I'm a
supernaturalist for 'believing' in the existence of a computer program is
ludicrous.  All I can surmise is that you have developed your own very
special definition of 'existence'.  Fortunately, I use the normal definition
that most scientists would use.

So quit labeling me as a patternist.  That's your label, not mine.  There's
nothing philosophical about trying to preserve the physical arrangement
(call it a pattern if you wish) of the atoms in my brain.   So going back to
your very first post on this topic, it would be unprofessional of me to
bring up any of this philosophical nonsense on my cryonics website.  It
doesn't have anything at all to do with cryonics, which I consider to be a
medical procedure.

Jordan Sparks

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