Group prayer on Skype on behalf of our Christian members

[The Industrial Atheist]

ps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2010/mar/19/darwin-reciprocal-altruism-vampire-bats





Contrary to what is often supposed, your prey – large mammals such as South American cattle – are quite good at detecting you and sometime you go an entire night without feeding. Then you are in trouble. Two nights without food and you are dead.
Vampire bats, in a manner that would I am sure have delighted Charles Darwin had he known of it, have developed an ingenious way round this problem. They hang around (sorry!) in groups but form reciprocal relationships with particular individuals. Suppose you and I are such a pair and you go a night without food while I have been more successful. I typically regurgitate a meal of blood for you. When next I go a night without getting a meal of my own you reciprocate by regurgitating a meal for me.


Evolutionary biologists call this reciprocal altruism. You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. Now, reciprocal altruism isn't restricted to vampire bats. It is found in a number of long-lived species where individuals can recognise one another as individuals. Supremely, of course, it is found in humans

You may want to check your sources before you google search and try to find anything that agrees with your position.




This priest was using the example of the Bats to make a, for lack of a better term, 'spiritual' comparison.

I take it you and Tizheruk are in agreement with what the priest says?

That doesn't change anything it says. Like many UK priests, he obviously believes in evolution and other established science. So I don't really get the point of mentioning that he's religious and doesn't think Evolution COMPLETELY accounts for human moral behavior.

I was addressing the issue of: Do animals have morality.

[The Grand Nudger]

De Waal wouldn;t have been my first choice for a source denying non-human morality.

[I_am_not_mafia]

FFS Huggy just completely ignored my point about the difference between providing evidence and interpreting that evidence. How many times do I have to repeat it? The whole point of being a scientist is to question critically whether your peers are drawing the correct conclusions from the evidence that they are presenting. I do not think De Waal is. I think the evidence he is providing demonstrates morality in animals. I am not going to repeat this a fourth time for Huggy.

And now Huggy is debating AI with me? Fucking me? If he even can't get his head around the scientific method then how the fuck is he going to understand how the various AI techniques work?

Huggy I have a far more in-depth understanding about the fundamental nature of intelligence both natural and artificial and their implementation than you will ever have.

[The Industrial Atheist]

Since you kudosed The Industrial Atheist post I'll take that to mean from now on you're willing to accept religious sources...

This was a good example of something I had known of from other sources. He isn't right because he's religious, he's right because you can verify the things he said.

I mean aside from a mildly religious statement that suggests he doesn't think it's ALL evolution.

I don't think priests or Christians are wrong about everything they say because they're theists, and I don't think Atheists are right about everything they say because they're Atheists.

It's not as if he's quoting some mystical religious text. I can provide links to a completely secular source if you like.

[Huggy Bear]

FFS Huggy just completely ignored my point about the difference between providing evidence and interpreting that evidence. How many times do I have to repeat it? The whole point of being a scientist is to question critically whether your peers are drawing the correct conclusions from the evidence that they are presenting. I do not think De Waal is. I think the evidence he is providing demonstrates morality in animals. I am not going to repeat this a fourth time for Huggy.

And now Huggy is debating AI with me? Fucking me? If he even can't get his head around the scientific method then how the fuck is he going to understand how the various AI techniques work?

Huggy I have a far more in-depth understanding about the fundamental nature of intelligence both natural and artificial and their implementation than you will ever have.

Yes Mathilda, you have demonstrated on many occasions the limits of your understanding...

But no matter, by saying this you then exacerbate another existing problem. A wooden ark could not have been big enough to two of each species, yet alone many specimens of the same species sorted into similar "kinds".

Because yet again science has falsified the Bible, this time by demonstrating that wooden ships can only be built so large before they sink.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyoming_(schooner)

*emphasis mine*
According to your article, the Wyoming appears to measure 450 ft. overall.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_treasure_ship

The size and dimensions of the treasures are heavily debated. According to British scientist, historian and sinologist Joseph Needham, the purported dimensions of the largest of these ships were 137 m (450 ft) by 55 m (180 ft), which would make them at least twice as long as the largest European ships at the end of the sixteenth century. These dimensions have been challenged on engineering grounds and on the reliability of their sources; some have claimed they could not have been more than 61–76 m (200–250 feet) or that they could only have been used on special occasions in the relative safety of the lower Yangtze River. However, in 1962 a large rudder was unearthed in the Treasure Ship Yard in Nanjing with dimensions corresponding with a 600-ft long ship.

Oops!

[Amarok]

I take it you and Tizheruk are in agreement with what the priest says?

His religious views are of no concern to me . The science is what matters .

[I_am_not_mafia]

I think you need to learn the difference between the ability to solve problems vs the ability to reason.

Young children have the ability to problem solve, yet we don't hold them responsible for their actions, why?

OK do tell me what the difference is between being able to solve problems vs the ability to reason. And while you're at it, tell me how you solve problems without an ability to reason.

And yes, we do hold children responsible for their actions. Just not as much as adults. But that's because children are still developing, along with their ability to reason and solve problems.

Self-taught, ‘superhuman’ AI now even smarter, says creators

THE computer that stunned humanity by beating the best mortal players at a strategy board game requiring “intuition” has become even smarter, its creators claim.

Dubbed AlphaGo Zero, the Artificial Intelligence (AI) system learnt by itself, within days, to master the ancient Chinese board game known as “Go” — said to be the most complex two-person challenge ever invented.

It came up with its own, novel moves to eclipse all the Go acumen humans have acquired over thousands of years.

After just three days of self-training it was put to the ultimate test against AlphaGo, its forerunner which previously dethroned the top human champs.

AlphaGo Zero won by 100 games to zero.

“AlphaGo Zero not only rediscovered the common patterns and openings that humans tend to play ... it ultimately discarded them in preference for its own variants which humans don’t even know about or play at the moment,” said AlphaGo lead researcher David Silver.

The 3000-year-old Chinese game played with black and white stones on a board has more move configurations possible than there are atoms in the Universe.

My question to you is, do you belive a computer posses the ability to reason?

Without getting into issues of defining exactly what is meant by an ability to reason, which is actually a layman term that allows someone like you to equivocate. Yes computers can be programmed to reason and have done for many decades now. But certainly not as well as an animal. And that includes AlphaGo Zero.

I'm not even going to bother trying to explain why to you.

[The Grand Nudger]

I think that, when a box beats someone at a game, we think "damn the box has a better processor" or something conceptually similar...forgetting that the human player wasn;t just playing the game...but managing the vast biological machinery that allows them to be alive to play the game, lol.

Quite the handicap. The box has a much smaller task queue.

[Huggy Bear]

I think you need to learn the difference between the ability to solve problems vs the ability to reason.

Young children have the ability to problem solve, yet we don't hold them responsible for their actions, why?

OK do tell me what the difference is between being able to solve problems vs the ability to reason. And while you're at it, tell me how you solve problems without an ability to reason.

Are you telling me that you don't know the difference between reasoning and problem solving?

If problem solving is arriving at a solution to said problem, then reason is understanding the methods utilized to arrive at the solution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_solving

Problem solving consists of using generic or ad hoc methods, in an orderly manner, to find solutions to problems. Some of the problem-solving techniques developed and used in artificial intelligence, computer science, engineering, mathematics, or medicine are related to mental problem-solving techniques studied in psychology.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reason

Reason is the capacity for consciously making sense of things, establishing and verifying facts, applying logic, and changing or justifying practices, institutions, and beliefs based on new or existing information. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, science, language, mathematics, and art and is normally considered to be a distinguishing ability possessed by humans. Reason, or an aspect of it, is sometimes referred to as rationality.

*emphasis mine*
See, there IS a difference...

And yes, we do hold children responsible for their actions. Just not as much as adults. But that's because children are still developing, along with their ability to reason and solve problems.

Do you allow children to enter into contractual agreements where you're from?

Self-taught, ‘superhuman’ AI now even smarter, says creators


My question to you is, do you belive a computer posses the ability to reason?

Without getting into issues of defining exactly what is meant by an ability to reason, which is actually a layman term that allows someone like you to equivocate. Yes computers can be programmed to reason and have done for many decades now. But certainly not as well as an animal. And that includes AlphaGo Zero.

I'm not even going to bother trying to explain why to you.

According to the definition of reason I posted, you're wrong.

Not to mention the computer wasn't programed to play the game, the article clearly states it taught itself, and the fact that it taught itself and can wipe the floor with masters of the game, means that the computer has better reasoning capabilities than humans... according to your definition.

[Fireball]

I say we all go rep Huggy. He's the best troll and string-puller I've seen in a long time on these here intertubes.