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11 years ago
The closest to random is numbers determined by atmospheric noise. In truth it is not random; it is only random due to our lack of understanding of the universe.
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11 years ago
Similarly, the reason that human emotions seem special and unreproducible is just our lack of understanding of organic machinery.
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11 years ago
define inteligence, or creativity, or any "special" human trate and you will see that computers are able to fully mimic it...

the only reason there are no strong AI's going around is really just procesing power

if you tooc a computer sci studdent form 1980 and showed them what computers can do today they would tell you we already have AI, we just dont recognize it because we are so used to looking at it, and noone ever labled it as such.
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quote:
In truth it is not random

XIX-century world view detected. In XXI, we have probabilistic causality, too, and it seems to describe an important set of phenomena all too well.
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11 years ago
Computers are not "aware" of anything. They dont really "feel" pain or love.
Its all just simulacrum.

Even if they are able to externally behave same as humans do, there is this key difference.

I would feel no grudge smashing their silicon chips, knowing its all just numbers and algorithms and that there is no real feelings.

On the other hand, Im reasonably sure that other human beings and animals have similar internal feelings and would hurt if I hit them with silicon-smashing hammer.

Why is there a difference we cannot say yet. But your own pain or joy is the most "real" thing there is for you, and we all know computers, unlike humans, do not experience that.
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11 years ago
In the end humans are just heaps of flesh that do certain things because of internal rewards in the form of hormones. We do that because those of us who do could reproduce, or in other words: We perform evolution. We are "programmed" to do what "nature" (empirically) found out was best for our existence.

Frankly, i don't see much of a difference between humans behaving in a certain way because of how evolution "programmed" them, and computers acting in a certain way that we tell them to. For us humans, emotions are important and we think of technical objects as emotionless, but in my eyes emotions are just another technical aspect of human "mechanics", if you will.
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11 years ago
@MauranKilom

You should first figure out who are you arguing with:

- USranksomekid arguing for iron determinism and "magical" free will endowing exclusively humans;
- @[TROLOLO]ddabaeqepp claiming that current computational simulacra are capable of cognition and sentience;
- CZrankAdminLicho arguing that ddabb is incorrect and current generation of computers are mere simulacra capable of nothing
- me and waldo trolling some of those carbonofascists with the concept of "carbon nanotech robots" :P

... because your point actually doesn't affect any of those.
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CZrankAdminLicho
i have to admit i have a different perspective on the matter:

Humans are not "aware" of anything. They dont really "feel" pain or love.
Its all just simulacrum to the machine.

Even if they are able to externally behave same as machines do, there is this key difference.

I would feel no grudge smashing their fleshy bodies, knowing its all just goo and cytoplasm and that there is no real feelings.

On the other hand, Im reasonably sure that other machines have similar internal feelings and would hurt if I hit them with meatbag-smashing hammer.

Why is there a difference we cannot say yet. But your own pain or joy is the most "real" thing there is for you, and we all know humans, unlike machines, do not experience that.

silly meatbag...
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11 years ago
Of course you can try to deny your own subjectivity, but it exists.
If a computer stores its mood in a single variable, its changing value will not make it feel any different.

Humans are different because of that internal awarness. How and why that arises is uknown but it would be arrogant to assume that we know all..

Few centuries ago brain was thought to work using levers and pullies, then with the telephone it was thought to be giant telephone switch, later electronic device and now information processing computer..

Just exactly how it does what it does and why would it give a rise to internal self-awarness is still unknown.

Decades ago it was thought that we are years from general AI, now nobody knows even with exponentially more power. It was assumed that once you reach certain complexity, awarness and conscioussness just spontaneously appear. Its now known that this is not the case.
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11 years ago
It sounds kind of like you are arguing that consciousness is spiritual and not physical.
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11 years ago
CZrankAdminLicho
:P true computer conscience is something that is so abstract from how meatbags think, it is most likley would be incomprehencible to pitifull meatbags.

meatbags take hours and days to prosess something a computer is capable of doing instantly, its signals travel at the speed of light(specific to the conductor) while a humans mind can only transmit at a measly 1000m/s.

you dont need to reach singularity point to have sentient machines, the first traces of such systems will probably start filtering in by 2020-30, based on self evolving code, runing trillions of cycles per second.
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11 years ago
It may well be USrankluckywaldo7 in a sense that it's not a simple mechanical deterministic process which you can simulate with pen and paper.
There is still plenty of uncharted space in "physical". It could employ quantum processes in some strange way, which itself could be misunderstood. It could be in some ways acting in non-local space like quantum entanglement.
We have no idea what is 96% of matter and energy in universe, strange things might be lurking all around and inside us, in the folded dimensions, in infinite parallel universes branching with each event, in other m-branes smashing our brane .. who knows..
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11 years ago
AI do not have the heuristic (which was added organically thru eon of evolution and experience) in human, but only have the general problem solving capability. Human already have these problem solving ability + ability to interpolate reality without much effort.

Thus, AI is not efficient at solving real-world problem. Althought precise, it must take incredible CPU power to view a simple human's reality.

Its more likely that AI is extension of human intelligence (cyborg/cybernetic) than a saperate entity. Where its existent rely on human operator & guidance.
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That is indeed the current state.

But with enough power and data input, you could have code evolving from itself to solve arbitrarily complex problems. Let me render this more precisely:

Humans are (evolutionarily) optimized for the problems they are supposed to deal with (while sucking at other things). We haven't even started computer evolution (in terms of them training themselves), so you can't say computers are unable to have abstraction/problem solving capabilities/reality "interpolation". I'm constantly observing myself thinking in models of stuff, which is just what computers do. We are not aware how much we abstract and classify the flood of information pouring down on us, but internally we use simple models into which we fit the stuff we see, hear or feel. We act led by our hormones, think in categories and assume us to be self-aware. Creativity is currently not easy for computers, but would you expect a jellyfish to be creative?

Also (about "internal self-awareness"), would you say that dolphins or apes are less sentient than humans? I don't think so. They recognize themselves in mirrors, they have emotions and "know" how to interact with their environment. So what difference is there between them and us, aside from the fact that we are abusing our environment on a large scale?
More to the point: How do you know that something is not self-aware? If it's something "spiritual", how can we know it doesn't happen in microprocessors?
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11 years ago
I'm not sure you can know for certain that something is self aware. You know you are and how it feels and I have no doubt that all animals posses similar quality to same or lesser degree.

You also know that rock is probably not self-aware. And we also know that all computer does, can be simualted with pen and paper and simple step of instructions - adding two numbers and comparing numbers.

Do you think that if you were executing computer program using pen and paper you would create some extra awarness which would really feel same way you do feel?

I think we are missing something here..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness
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11 years ago
Btw awarness I'm talking about has nothing to do with recognizing itself.
Its simply the capacity to feel the experience. If animal really internally feels pain in similar way humans do, it already does something no present computer can..
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quote:
The existence of a "hard problem" is controversial and has been disputed by some philosophers.[4] Providing an answer to this question could lie in understanding the roles that physical processes play in creating consciousness and the extent to which these processes create our subjective qualities of experience.[5]


Working on the very plausible assumption that the processes in the universe can be described by (physical) models, do you think you could obtain some extra awareness which would feel this way by applying these models (which can as well be done with pen and paper)? Apparently yes. Computers could just as well apply those models.

Note: "physical" just means it's us who is trying to explain the world and find those models. Just "models" is probably more accurate, since we might not find them all.

PS: Just because i like your pen and paper analogy: http://xkcd.com/505/
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On the "feel the experience": Pain is just something evolution implemented to make you avoid certain stuff. Extreme heat and cold are painful to us because it's bad for us, those of us who didn't feel pain from that simply died. Pain is your nerves firing into areas of your brain that trigger certain reactions, like undoing what you just did (pulling back your hand from that hot thing), as well as conditioning you not to repeat what you just did. Maybe even some adrenaline etc.
I don't think humans feel pain in another way than ants do.
The same applies to basically any other emotion. Singing, making or hearing music feels good because our brain is programmed to reward us for that. Back in the ancient days, those groups that employed music survived better because of more cooperation, which carved music as something good into our brains. I don't feel self-aware when feeling pain or listening to music. In fact i feel how instincts take over in these situations and i have less control over myself, i don't think that corresponds to self-awareness.

I'd say it's more about noticing yourself thinking, observing yourself if you will. But what step is it from observing others to observing yourself? Are our lives different because we are self-aware?
But I don't think we'll be able to hit the nail on what exactly self awareness is, generations of philosophists have tried before us.
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11 years ago
:P ive allways had trouble believing in consciousness as anything more then a comlex algorighim...

when you look at it from its basics there is nothing special about human consciousness...

self awarness: recognise self:self (really easy to do, hell single celled organisims can do this)

concience: uterly pointless guilt complex

creativity: itiration of an idea

belief: more pointless built complexes

problem-solving: more itiration till you get it right (simulated problem used for this)

emotion: probably the most archaic bit, we havent managed to teach a computer to feel these, because we dont understand how we feel emotions ourseves...
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11 years ago
There is nothing surprising with pain and reaction to pain - its completely natural that organisms avoid damage and it is easy to "program".

Question is - why does it "feel" as pain .. why do you feel anything instead of nothing?
You could be programmed with internal states and thinking and not be aware of it - not really feel it even if your logic module could comprehend it..

Focus on yourself and you will notice that your awarnes is some sort of inner observer .. you can notice thoughts popping in and out, feelings coming along.
We don't need it but we have it, why and how it works?

As you say humans could function exactly same without this inner feeling/awarness.. so it is really hard to prove that something has it. We have to rely on intuition and personal experience.

Personally I think we are missing something rather big here.
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