Google achieves artificial stupidity?

[peacewithoutgod]

I see y'all were easily impressed by ELIZA the original bot that simulated a psychologist.  The code may change, but the reality is, no matter how you arrange 1s and 0s ... it is the same thing fundamentally ... and it still isn't alive or conscious.

Oh come now, give it just a little more thought than that - how can you really think such an argument isn't too much like saying no matter how they arrange C,G,A, and T to form genetic codons, they will never produce that clone of Baruch, complete with all of his natural, chemically-driven predispositions? How can anything composed essentially of four bases be alive and conscious? Perhaps the reality of life is that it's essentially a lot simpler than you may think it is when you still don't understand it. I think this is where we should polish out the rust and hone up that Ockam's Razor.

[Baruch]

Unfortunately a little knowledge of science is a bad thing ... a human cell is a lot more than just the DNA ... in fact the nuclear machinery is a lot more than just the DNA.  Now we know that both Lamark and Darwin were both correct ... you both inherit from cellular DNA (nuclear and mitochondrial) but you also inherit from the early life experience of your parents, because the proteins that control DNA expression, actually are modified by experience, and are carried by the egg and sperm along with the DNA.  Gregor Mendel was obsolete around 1960.  You gotta catch up!

Well it is OK to be a techno-booster ... just don't put too much money in tech stocks, particularly in early 2000.  If you want to believe your Roomba is alive and sentient in naturalist terms ... I won't mind ... just let me turn my head and not snicker to your face ;-)

[Hakurei Reimu]

Unfortunately a little knowledge of science is a bad thing ... a human cell is a lot more than just the DNA ... in fact the nuclear machinery is a lot more than just the DNA.  Now we know that both Lamark and Darwin were both correct ... you both inherit from cellular DNA (nuclear and mitochondrial) but you also inherit from the early life experience of your parents, because the proteins that control DNA expression, actually are modified by experience, and are carried by the egg and sperm along with the DNA.  Gregor Mendel was obsolete around 1960.  You gotta catch up!

Waddya think mediates epigenetics, which is what you're clearly referring to? Those methyl groups don't attach themselves.

Lamark was still wrong. Mere use does not determine what traits are inherited. Epigenetics provide an additional channel for how organisms can adapt to their environment, but a lot of poor bastards still had to die along the way until a creature that could encode epigenetic hints for their offspring, and even more bastards had to die before those epigenetic signals were sorted out. This is pure Darwinian natural selection, not Lamarkism.

[aitm]

If you want to believe your Roomba is alive and sentient in naturalist terms ... I won't mind ..

HEY! Don't pick on my Roomba's,  I love em.

[Hakurei Reimu]

^ Indeed, Roombas are cool. Especially with other pets:

[peacewithoutgod]

DNA doesn't just drive its machinery, it builds it from available resources. Not that this should matter with life forms based on silicon chips or quantum particles, why do you really think that? Only the DNA in carbon life contains the instructions by which everything else can be obtained through available resources - in the primordial ooze, those resources were available, thereby the first self-replicating proteins began the big chain reaction which gave rise to us. But we aren't talking about DNA life, are we? Instructions are instructions, and resources are resources. Put them together in a way that the one can utilize the other, and anything can happen!

Baruch, there is no magic behind the making of life - we are really just thinking, feeling, and reacting machines which happen to be complex enough that we have the illusion of making our own decisions, when in fact that effect comes from hierarchical loops in our coding which gives us the options to reason, and based on that reasoning we rewrite lower-order routines. We can even rewrite our reasoning code too. While I could hardly imagine writing software of such complexity as this, it in the presence of the resources which would enable it is the key to all forms of life. You aren't your outer mitochondria, nor are you 100% your DNA instructions, you are your software which is stored in your brain!  Anyway, carbon life is only form we know of it now, but this paradigm is likely to shift. 0s and 1s make software today, and even that paradigm may shift tomorrow. We have already seen the shift from simple silicon wafers to the use of quantum physics to drive our software, allowing greater complexity in time which allow our machines to interact with us.

I believe it is the fact that we make our machines interactive where you have your cognitive dissonance. Siri is made to interact and no more, and I won't weigh in on whatever Google is promoting now. Siri has no true self-awareness - it doesn't truly appreciate itself, doesn't mind if you shut it down, has none of its own desires or aspirations, and it certainly has no emotional depth. But why can't a machine have software which enables all of the above? Give it the right options, and it, just like you, will be able to reprogram itself! Whatever the nuts and bolts are behind any software, all of it makes intelligence. Intelligence, including human intelligence is nothing more than software in action! No, we can't view the actual code, and we don't even understand yet how it works, but the evidence for it is as sure as natural selection.

Unfortunately a little knowledge of science is a bad thing ... a human cell is a lot more than just the DNA ... in fact the nuclear machinery is a lot more than just the DNA.  Now we know that both Lamark and Darwin were both correct ... you both inherit from cellular DNA (nuclear and mitochondrial) but you also inherit from the early life experience of your parents, because the proteins that control DNA expression, actually are modified by experience, and are carried by the egg and sperm along with the DNA.  Gregor Mendel was obsolete around 1960.  You gotta catch up!

Well it is OK to be a techno-booster ... just don't put too much money in tech stocks, particularly in early 2000.  If you want to believe your Roomba is alive and sentient in naturalist terms ... I won't mind ... just let me turn my head and not snicker to your face ;-)

[Baruch]

Faith in mysterious carbon vitalism ... is secular woo woo.  Unless you want to believe that some kinds of quantum electron orbitals are alive and others are not ;-))

[Hakurei Reimu]

Who is being a carbon vitalist here?

[Baruch]

Sorry ... if I post right after another, it usually is implied that is who I am referring to.  So in this case, Peacewithoutgod.

The description of molecules that occur in living things ... is description, not explanation.  Unless one is part of the cult of partial quantum vitalism ;-)

[peacewithoutgod]

Unfortunately a little knowledge of science is a bad thing ... a human cell is a lot more than just the DNA ... in fact the nuclear machinery is a lot more than just the DNA.  Now we know that both Lamark and Darwin were both correct ... you both inherit from cellular DNA (nuclear and mitochondrial) but you also inherit from the early life experience of your parents, because the proteins that control DNA expression, actually are modified by experience, and are carried by the egg and sperm along with the DNA.  Gregor Mendel was obsolete around 1960.  You gotta catch up!

Well it is OK to be a techno-booster ... just don't put too much money in tech stocks, particularly in early 2000.  If you want to believe your Roomba is alive and sentient in naturalist terms ... I won't mind ... just let me turn my head and not snicker to your face ;-)

Here's something you may want to google: "human appendix".

[peacewithoutgod]

HEY! Don't pick on my Roomba's,  I love em.

Can they make the 1/8" bump from bare floor to non-shag area rugs?

[peacewithoutgod]

Faith in mysterious carbon vitalism ... is secular woo woo.  Unless you want to believe that some kinds of quantum electron orbitals are alive and others are not ;-))

Like any doctrine, can't argue with that!

[peacewithoutgod]

Sorry ... if I post right after another, it usually is implied that is who I am referring to.  So in this case, Peacewithoutgod.

The description of molecules that occur in living things ... is description, not explanation.  Unless one is part of the cult of partial quantum vitalism ;-)

Hmmm... I'm arguing that thinking, self-aware intelligence is not necessarily dependent on carbon-based, molecular action in cells which life as we know it, and you are accusing me of carbon vitalism? I essentially said that true intelligence is possible with any materials, and the method doesn't matter so long as it works, therefore I have a good case against the accusation of partial quantum vitalism as well.

To all of the above, I plead NOT GUILTY! 

[Baruch]

Go build a Horta.  Then come show us what you made.  BTW - I did a study on potential silicon based virus back when I was still in HS.  Like in most rhetoric, if you keep redefining what a living thing is ... then yes, your Roomba is alive.  But then Crazy Al's car sales is real, where you can buy a good used car for only $1000 ;-)

[Hakurei Reimu]

Redefining terms is sometimes necessary, and most terms have multiple definitions and connotations. A classic SciFi AI wouldn't be alive in a strictly technical sense, but it would be sentient and, in some circumstances, a person â€" which is close enough to the real thing that people would shrug their shoulders and let the term "alive" pass. As to silicon life, it probably won't be a horta. Silicon doesn't have nearly the rich chemistry as carbon. However, if a Roomba were to give birth to another via raw materials scavenged from other machinery, I'd think I'd seriously consider it to be alive.