If we are not ones and zeros in a bio-computer, what do you think we are? What's special about a brain that sets it apart from a computer aside from complexity?

(April 21, 2015 at 9:49 pm)whateverist Wrote: ... The idea of the character Data from Star Trek is fun but bogus ...

... But the idea of Data wrestling with the concept of self and assimilating more and more human traits is just good fiction.  It isn't quite up there with the idea of a creator god.  But it is fairly silly stuff ...

And why say you that?  It is very probable that science will eventually understand the brain enough to replicate it in some form. Science has been pretty good at finding what makes things tick and then replicating it. The world is flat and the sun goes around it. Anything is possible.

I get the sense that a computer will never have our brand of complexity, but something else entirely without all the flaws. We don't seem to have the same trajectory.

(April 21, 2015 at 10:20 pm)AFTT47 Wrote: If we are not ones and zeros in a bio-computer, what do you think we are? What's special about a brain that sets it apart from a computer aside from complexity?

Messy chemical reactions and behaviors selected for over eons.  Somewhere along the way a complex amalgam of cells developed a coordinated response system that out competed the competition.  A computer can be made to survive.  I'm not sure how it would ever come to care about that - except to mimic the care of its programmer.

Computers do functions.  I'm not sure how it would do feeling states.  If it never cared about its survival except in a programmed way like the one Asimov wrote about for robots, it is hard to see how there could be the sense of self Data exhibits.  (Love his character in the show by the way.)

(April 21, 2015 at 10:36 pm)Exian Wrote: I get the sense that a computer will never have our brand of complexity, but something else entirely without all the flaws. We don't seem to have the same trajectory.

We are not as complex as we would like to imagine ourselves as being.  We merely like to make it seem as though we are more complex because we do not want to properly get to know and understand one another.

Nobody has any idea how consciousness emerges from a complex pattern of molecules that interact with particles showering upon our intricately woven biological machinery, that then results in lush streaming experiences and languages useful in identifying and separating the program's differentae of individual self from that of a highly ordered environment. The mind forms an appearance of intelligibility, giving rise to such lofty fancies as the true, the good, and the beautiful. Computers serve the purposes they're contrived for but I am doubtful that they will ever contrive their own and then weep when they realize it is contrived. To put it another way, AI is to the human brain what Play Doh figures are to Mt. Rushmore.

(April 22, 2015 at 12:27 am)Kitan Wrote:

(April 21, 2015 at 10:36 pm)Exian Wrote: I get the sense that a computer will never have our brand of complexity, but something else entirely without all the flaws. We don't seem to have the same trajectory.

We are not as complex as we would like to imagine ourselves as being.  We merely like to make it seem as though we are more complex because we do not want to properly get to know and understand one another.

I don't know, man, we're pretty damn complex lol. I guess we can't say for sure until we've cracked this nut. From what I've read, my money's on systems chemistry getting the job done. Until then, the level of complexity of our brains is sort of hard to gauge, except to say its complex enough that it has eluded us thus far.

Some big discovery will undoubtedly lead to a huge leap in computer complexity, but I don't think it will resemble us in the least, at any step of the way. But that's me thinking inside the box. Who knows what that big leap will bring? I hav to ask, though: If computers do end up resembling our complexity, what would be the point?

(April 21, 2015 at 9:48 pm)AFTT47 Wrote: Man-made computers are made of materials that don't do that. Carbon atoms do do that. It's not hard to understand.

I think you're abusing the do too much

We are able to describe to each other our "emotions" and have ways of displaying them to each other which give indications.

It's easy to assume anything we don't consider alive won't have emotions. But what are emotions really, other than a configuration which falls under certain criteria?

Maybe (gonna sound like a theist hehe) other stuff has "emotions" too, maybe they have emergent properties like consciousness, it's just they have no way to express it so we never see it. Maybe in some way a computer "experiences" things. Because we don't understand very much about consciousness except that it is an emergent property. Why would we think the only such emergent properties that exist are ones which can be communicated?

I know that is based on absolutely nothing but speculation, so I don't expect anyone to take it seriously. Just throwing random stuff out there.

(April 22, 2015 at 12:59 am)Exian Wrote: I don't know, man, we're pretty damn complex 

I don't know, man, people are rather simple for me to comprehend.