X-Message-Number: 8551
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: Re: CryoNet #8533 - #8540
Date: Sun, 7 Sep 1997 01:36:57 -0700 (PDT)

Some added comments:

(You see, I got my groceries and other necessaries, and got some other 
useful things done).


For Yvan Bozzonetti: I would agree that to fly we need not imitate birds
(though birds did teach us a lot, particularly the gliding, large birds ---
a little known fact is that they helped design the earliest wings. It very
soon became clear that we would not fly by flapping our wings, but that's
not the end of the question). Nor would a device capable of human thinking
and action necessarily be identical to us in all respects. HOWEVER the two
problems of flight, and creating a human intelligence, don't stand on a 
level and can't yet be compared. (I say "device" rather than computer because
its not obvious that it would be a computer). Just what do we really need 
to do to match Yvan Bozzonetti? 

We do NOT want to believe we have triumphantly uploaded Yvan into a computer
only to discover that the uploaded creature lacks some features essential
to his former human self. For instance, somehow his feelings no longer 
tie in with his actions or thoughts... or other problems. We aren't just
trying to fly: they knew what flight was, their problem was one of how
to implement it. But tell me about Yvan: just what is it that makes him
a person, and what a person is, and what traits, mental and physical, Yvan
must have for him to agree that he has not lost anything important. We 
study brains to find out such things, and already that study has given us
lots of food for thought: that there are several different kinds of 
memories, each working differently, for instance. We'll no doubt learn more.
But until we have a far better idea of just what a person is and how they
work, and moreover, an idea proven by experiment, we aren't even at the 
level of knowing what we want to do. 

And if his brain were damaged, just what should we do to repair it? Even
assuming complete control, we don't yet know all the chemicals involved,
the forms of nerve transmission, the exact abilities of neurons of 
different kinds and locations. It would be like trying to put together
a radio from parts whose function and relationships were almost entirely
unknown to us. 

Finally, I note an interesting series of letters in the latest SPECTRUM.
Basically, a number of computer engineers chimed in to say that the recent
defeat of Kasparov by an IBM computer was a victory of the engineers who
built it, not the computer. Some people have complained that whenever 
somebody gets computers to do a humanlike thing, that thing is then said
not to need human abilities at all. Well, perhaps the problem there is that
those who think it did a humanlike thing are the ones lacking a good idea
of humanity, and those who think it did not were quite correct. It was nice
to learn a bit about the engineers responsible for Big Blue, after all.

			Long long life,

				Thomas Donaldson

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