X-Message-Number: 7995 Date: Wed, 2 Apr 1997 20:46:54 -0800 (PST) From: John K Clark <> Subject: Uploading and stuff -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In #7991 (Thomas Donaldson) on Tue, 1 Apr 1997 Wrote: >To really emulate even a single neuron in a computer would take a >computer of great power How big would a rod logic nanocomputer need to be to equal the power of a modern mainframe? Drexler figures it would need to have about 150 billion parts (atoms), a cube 1000 nanometers on an edge would do it, that's about as big as a mitochondrion. You could fit well over a thousand such mainframes into a human cell of average size. >You also (so far as you do) claim that intelligent behavior implies >consciousness, thus begging a number of questions. Is the behavior >of the computer in the Turing Test intelligent? If a computer behaves like an intelligent human then it is intelligent, I'm not saying that's a necessary condition but it is sufficient. >just what is to be intelligent behavior in the first place? 50 years ago virtually everybody thought that playing Chess or solving a Calculus problem involved intelligence, in fact those things were the very personification of intelligence, no more. Today the working definition of intelligence is precise but not constant, now it means those things that computers still can't do better than people. As soon as a computer beats us at something we decide it must not "really" require intellect after all. Someone of a more cynical nature than I might almost call it sour grapes. >I am doubting the Turing Test, not just as a test of consciousness >but as a test of intelligent behavior. I'll bet you think Albert Einstein was intelligent, why? The man died in 1955 so you probably never met him or talked to him on the phone, the only evidence you have for his brilliance is the stuff he published, and he didn't even write it to you. That is far weaker evidence than what The Turing Test can provide. You never had a dialog with Einstein, you never asked him questions, you never heard his answers, and yet you still think he was pretty smart. Why? >IF we define "information" as a symbolic description of something, >then no amount of information about an object can be identified >with the object itself. If preserving a description of the position and velocity of every particle in my body is not enough to preserve "me", then I must have a soul. If so then why are we fooling around with Cryonics? >Sure, in cryonics terms it may allow us to recreate the object, but >that re-creation is then different from the information which >described it. Re-creation is the name of the game, except that I am not an object, I am an adjective. I am the way matter reacts when it is organized in a John Clark way, so it's true, I would be meaningless without matter, but matter is generic, any will do, the unique part of me is information. John K Clark -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.i iQCzAgUBM0Mwv303wfSpid95AQFglATuJSTeJsTUN2xGRaBotoKlUzx2YgAiy8rr Y8ZweNjyaReAY5hJ9hegG4eRkg1ZL5nvLovte95x7F2ys205wdoE7xVE2Hqdfa27 mcBrLrVmrqk/L+S2AZDxzrTLRK7oeejtAwGkT85DVaJ19qudFoAr8eCgc2uKca5j KiZGPh9uaYYpThOmHIV/duYDqvE0TGKYqr+mQ5HKfiQuof2IM5Y= =M3g+ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=7995