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Because absent evidence that there is something fundamental preventing us from one day copying the structure of a human brain and ending up with a working device, whatever claims they make are hand-waving.
I posted the article because it is thought provoking, although I disagree with it. The reason is for example statements like this "The real problem is that computers are not in the world, because they are not embodied." "And I shall argue that they cannot pass the full Turing test because they are not in the world, and, therefore, they have no understanding." First I think that whether something is embodied or not do…
My hunch agrees with the paper. Because computers operate on the rational numbers instead of the real numbers, they can never be embodied. They are always in a simulation...
However if I remember correctly continuous signals (that is functions of the reals) can be represented without loss with a finite (but sufficient number of) discrete samples.
See:
> which have allegedly shown that our decisions are not the result of “some mysterious free will”, but the result of “millions of neurons calculating probabilities within a split second”
> the quotations are “nothing but” the result of chemical algorithms and “no more than” the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells. How can they then be true?
The article is suggesting that human beings cannot say true things about the world or themselves if human intelligence is no more than chemical algorithms and nerve cells, and that proponents of physicalism are therefore contradicting themselves. This is a fairly bizarre argument.
The use of "allegedly" with regards to explaining human decisions as a result of neurons further reinforces the claim that therefore, there must be some mysterious free will, a human soul, or here a "social context", to explain human consciousness.
The trouble with vitalism or claims of a human soul should be fairly self-evident in the modern age, and claiming that denying it is "scientism" is utter nonsense.
They then mix it up by saying that computers are not in the physical world and do not have a body, therefore cannot be generally intelligent like humans. This is obviously false, what is a robot if not a computer with a body? Computers can interact with the world using sensors and actuators, there's no theoretical reason that they could not match or exceed human physical capabilities (they already do in narrow instances).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My hunch agrees with the paper. Because computers operate on the rational numbers instead of the real numbers, they can never be embodied. They are always in a simulation...
This is like saying CD players will never be as good as vinyl record players because the first use digital signals (rational numbers) and the second analogue (real numbers).
It is difficult to build/create something you don't understand. A computer is just a playback machine for binary logic. We know that "intelligence" can create binary logic. We don't know if binary logic can create "intelligence". Claims that it is possible are really more "religious" than scientific at this point.
That would be quite an extraordinary claim that requires equally extraordinary evidence.
Ingenious. Another article like "We will never travel faster than lightspeed", or "We will never be able to live forever", or as people back in the stone age would have said "We will never have a fission reactor". When will people finally realize that we know absolutely NOTHING about what's possible and whats not. Science made baby steps. We are 100 years in. And yeah, we know everything right? Yeah General AI... Not…
Interestingly, the examples you cite seem to be in a decreasing order of difficulty, with several orders of magnitude more of effort required. AGI is gonna be much easier than living forever, which seems should be easier than travelling faster than light.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe I don’t understand your point, but our senses are also compressed to some extent. Your synapses fire or don’t fire, providing digitized input for some of your senses like hearing. At any point there is a discrete amount of hormones in your body. etc etc. That doesn’t seem categorically different from any man made sensor.
Our sensorium could be indistinguishable from how it'd be in a simulation without impacting my point. Software can hop from host to host (all Turing machines can simulate each other) but living intelligence is embodied. Because of this, no matter how "smart" computers get, we can't trust them not to do stupid stuff. They are smart like that kid in high school who comes up with a formula to turn the world into silly p…
The first sentence shows that the authors know nothing about computation. So, there is nothing substantial to read here.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My hunch agrees with the paper. Because computers operate on the rational numbers instead of the real numbers, they can never be embodied. They are always in a simulation...
It has been a minute since I picked up my information theory book. However if I remember correctly continuous signals (that is functions of the reals) can be represented without loss with a finite (but sufficient number of) discrete samples.