I think I just peed in the mash potatoes.

That depends on who the programmer is.

It doesn't take much to mirror the reasoning skills of some people.

Where is this all-knowing computer again?

In Future Land?

Hmmm?

Who's future? I have plans to die before to aweful long.

I believe we are seeing a leakage coming from realist's box in the form of intellectual fantasy. Call it logical imagination of some sort. Its a promising and interesting development.

Perhaps they are trying to get out of their box?

Imagination’s leaking
from logicians who are peeking
into future worlds
for the spirit they are seeking

If only they’d allow
for the magick of the Tao
they could come and live with us
in the timeless world of now

Kewel!!

We are entering a new age of technology. It will be perhaps the most dangerous time for mankind. Ignorance is bliss, so dont worry.

Its the most dangerous time for mankind already.

Worrying is an exercise in futility, not to mention a negative thought form.

(I'm sure you don't worry about the aliens at all. )

You can't worry about what you don't know about. That is why ignorance is bliss.

But that has nothing to do with what you have been talking about concerning programing computers to reason like humans.

i am actually a computer program but i am not supposed to let you know!

S1owland is a program
that's running on his own
churning out the data
that make the women moan

They beg him for a copy
of his enigmatic code
and try to plug his cable
in their femininic node

Procreating data
in the form of DNA
assimilating all his thoughts
even those that are risqué

Bits and bytes of knowledge
nibbling at their minds
driving women crazy
as it propagates their spines

Spinning like a galaxy
his disk a whirling mass
the women wanton frantically
to be his lov'in lass

No one knows who programmed him
some say that he evolved
that's a secret mystery
that's yet to be resolved





http://users.csonline.net/designer/ideas/slowhand.mp3

At least your thinking!

This was and still is a true statement, none-the-less...

JB,

Sorry if my words were taken as if I thought that you were interrupting. I can see how that would be the case, based upon how I wrote that earlier response. It most certainly could have been viewed as if I were separating from others. It wasn't meant that way.



Sloppiness... belonging to me.

It is obvious that a computer cannot reason with the same physiological mechanisms. The computer just would not know, but that is not in question. The same information could be weighed with and by the same information.

That is the point, I think???



Jeremy?

I was just thinking that the very title of this thread and the way it views this topic is quite typical of using the same reasoning to give the same results.

"Does randomness allow free will?"

The very idea of reducing the concepts that have been introduced by QM to 'randomness' is actually a huge mistake in the first place.

It's a huge mistake to think of QM as representing 'randomness'. That's just a very unfortunate mathematical term that became immensely popular because this is how things of often presented in technical literature.

In truth, it's not 'randomness' that is the key concept here.

It's complementarity.

Complementarity simply means that manifestion is not pre-determnined.

So we take that to then mean that it must be 'random'.

But that's very poor thinking actually. Because that whole idea brings up a picture of a pre-existing potentiality that then randomly becomes manifest.

Therein lies a gross misunderstanding.

There is no pre-existing potentiality. All that exists is potentiality without pre-existence, and therefore it cannot truly be randomly manifest because it didn't pre-exist in the first place.

So, yes, looking at the problem from a whole different perspective may very well help a person to get out of the rut of using the same reasoning to come to the same conclusions all the time.

Just think in term of pure potentiality becoming manifiest.

And forget about any ideas of randomness. Most people have the wrong idea of what randomness even means anyway. It was originally a mathematical concept that most people use totally incorrectly in their own intuitive way anyway.

So forget about randomness and think in terms of pure potentiality.

I just now realized this. Deepak Chopra always speaks in terms of pure potentiality. I think if we were to suggest randomness to him he would have a belly laugh. It's just not the way he thinks of it I'm sure.

The whole "randomness" thing is a scientific and mathematically oriented concept.

All that QM is truly saying is that potentially is not pre-determined, it never truly says that it's random. That's just the way that mathematics deals with things that are not determined.

So randomness is probably a very bogus idea actually.

A concept of pure potentiality is far better.

That's actually more closely aligned to what quantum complementarity is saying anyway.

No form, becomes form.

Where's the 'randomness' in that?

We PUT randomness in that!

We put it in because it's the way we mathematically THINK of things that are undetermined.

There's no randomness in QM. Just pure potentiality.

Randomness is just a mathematical term that means we can't determine what's going to happen next.

Good to see you James, it's been a while!

So assuming it is a "true" statement, what is the point of the statement?

This statement says nothing except that identical programs given identical orders will do identical things.

So what?

Looks like a tautology to me.

It reminds me of the other similar cliché:

A difference that makes no difference is no difference.

To this...



Came this...



Well, it means that if a clever programmer could know all of the things by which one ponders experience, then a program could be written which measures the same information with the same reasoning and it would end up with the same end result.

In other words, do you know(by my writing alone) whether I am a program designed specifically to respond to people like you, or am I a real person?



How would you know?

Problem solving, with humans, involves weighing information with thought and reason. It is the only way to intentionally problem solve, and is necessarily true in all cases.

Now, back to what Jeremy said earlier...

Is there a problem which a human can solve that a computer cannot?

Corollary: The best program to solve problems will take all available types of factors into consideration. However, after the program has been written and finished, some new factors affecting the outcome of the situation may be discovered, which yield better results of predicting the future. Or else the situation may have been thoroughly accounted for, and prediction by a program be a hundred percent accurate, still, new developments may arise that necessitate the alteration of the reality that must be incorporated into the program anew.

This means that in our world only humans can decide on recognising new paradigms. Machines can look for new causes, but they can't directly decide which new factors to look at.

In your opinion perhaps. Certainly not in my opinion.

I've known people who have solved problems entirely intutiively without thought or reason. I've done this myself.

So I disgree that your statement above is necessarily true in all cases. That's just your own personal opinion.

However, knowing that you believe this sheds much light on how you personally think.

Abra... you are saying this? That you can intentionally solve a problem and without thinking about it or reasoning it out?

How is that done?

Maybe I'm not reading you right.

Corollary: The best program to solve problems is stagnant because it has no intention. It has no desire, it has no motivation, it has no feelings and needs.

On the other hand a mollusk will have feelings of pain, love, and hunger, it has the knowledge of happiness attained by copulation, feeding and oxigen-consumption, yet it has no way of solving problems because it lacks reasoning power.

I greatly admire Hume for realizing and incidentally teaching me, that humans are governed by their passions, and human's reasoning ability alone would not make them do anything, as much as passions don't have the ability alone by themselves to make a man do something.

Man is reason and feelings. Take away one or the other, and he or she ceases to be a human.