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Antiqua et Nova: Note on the relationship between AI and human intelligence

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Re: Antiqua et Nova: Note on the relationship between AI and human intelligence

#261

Post by mistrial9 »

Lammy wrote: post #243
titanomachy wrote: post #224

> the entire human person is simultaneously both material and spiritual... the human person transcends the material world through the soul... the human spirit does not exercise its normal mode of knowledge without the body I have a hard time wrapping my head around exactly what it is that Christians believe about immortality. So the soul lives on forever, but without the reasoning and intellectual capabilities grante…

Not a Christian or follower of any organized religion but IMHO: Humanity (capital-H) is immortal; individual humans are not. Individuals are like the memory cells keeping the accumulated body of knowledge alive, and that body of knowledge is “God” or whatever, simultaneously human and spirit, an entire other world of Idea hosted in a distributed form in our physical reality. It's like a DRAM refresh where new individ…

such a powerful insight.. until the last half-sentence.. why add that ? really?

Re: Antiqua et Nova: Note on the relationship between AI and human intelligence

#262

Post by macrocosmos »

cynicalpeace wrote: post #238
CamperBob2 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

This is a subtle and fascinating reference I had to Google. It's this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot The problem with the argument is that the Athiestic viewpoint is indeed just as fantastical as the Thiestic viewpoint. It's basically switching out "Yahweh" with "Chance". It basically comes down to which God you believe in and how you define God. In my reading, a definition of God that is "caused e…

Good points. When I hear some people talk about reality and the Universe, I cannot find any distinction between the definitions for those concepts people use and between what other people call God.

I would find it hard to believe someone was being genuine if they said they reject the concept of God. Now for Christianity, I can see why people would refuse to believe that God came down to Earth in human form. And then they... washed feat and performed miracles. And the people then crucified the Son of God. But then that Son forgave them. Why would God let that happen and why so much forgiveness? And if that did happen, what would that mean?

Re: Antiqua et Nova: Note on the relationship between AI and human intelligence

#263

Post by sctb »

titanomachy wrote: post #224

> the entire human person is simultaneously both material and spiritual... the human person transcends the material world through the soul... the human spirit does not exercise its normal mode of knowledge without the body I have a hard time wrapping my head around exactly what it is that Christians believe about immortality. So the soul lives on forever, but without the reasoning and intellectual capabilities grante…

I'll give you my understanding, which isn't exactly Christian or Buddhist or whatever—it's just how it seems to me, and YMMV.

The word "soul" describes the fundamental sense of self experienced by a human person. We know this self isn't the same as our mind, our body, our possessions, or our memories, because those things change but the sense of self seemingly doesn't. It's just "me" or "I".

Because this sense of self doesn't change, it seems timeless, or eternal. And many experience some amount of tension because this eternal sense of self seems to get mixed up with all of the temporary things in the world, especially our bodies and minds. With that admixture comes a fear of losing the self (i.e. death), as everything temporary is eventually lost.

So what? The infinite is infinite, the finite is finite. IMO, any direct experience actually includes both. But anyway I figure it's wise to keep them straight and not mix them up.

Re: Antiqua et Nova: Note on the relationship between AI and human intelligence

#264

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

martin1975 wrote: post #222

Reminds me of one of my favorite ST: TNG episodes, "The Measure of a Man" - I urge anyone who read this note to watch this episode. Ultimately it comes down to the question of whether machines, regardless of how smart they can be made to appear, even if they pass the Turing test with flying colors, are imbued with a soul. In the episode, the Enterprise JAG officer, questions whether we humans "have souls." C.S. Lewis…

That's a great episode, but the question of whether anything has a soul is ill defined.

Until someone can come up with a rigorous definition of what a soul is, the question itself has no meaning.

Re: Antiqua et Nova: Note on the relationship between AI and human intelligence

#265

Post by mistrial9 »

lokimedes wrote: post #115
p2detar wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In a sense, people preaching the coming dominance of AI are suicidal or homicidal, since they are pursuing their own demise by technical means. Nope, that is an unsubstantial argument. Geoffrey Hinton, the „God father of AI“ is neither suicidal, nor homicidal.

He is also not cheering its “coming” but worried about the misuse of its power. You can say the same thing about other powerful inventions and their inventors.

true! there is a macabre vein of history in tech where "the inventor is killed by their creation" .. the list is longer than you might think at first

Re: Antiqua et Nova: Note on the relationship between AI and human intelligence

#266

Post by StefanBatory »

thrance wrote: post #129
StefanBatory wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God-Building

That's interesting, thanks for sharing. Believing an ideology is scientifc or natural and that its principles are discovered rather than invented" is a very dangerous thing indeed. So-called scientific socialism* is an obvious example of that. You can see some of this kind of thinking on the opposite side as well, with people claiming that humans are naturally greedy and selfish to justify objectivism or free market…

On that, this might be of interest to you as well :)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42028697

Re: Antiqua et Nova: Note on the relationship between AI and human intelligence

#267

Post by dmd »

tantaman wrote: post #246
titanomachy wrote: post #224

> the entire human person is simultaneously both material and spiritual... the human person transcends the material world through the soul... the human spirit does not exercise its normal mode of knowledge without the body I have a hard time wrapping my head around exactly what it is that Christians believe about immortality. So the soul lives on forever, but without the reasoning and intellectual capabilities grante…

It's been around 2000 years with many divisions and sects so I don't think you can give a single definition. Early Christians didn't agree on the divinity of Jesus. Hell wasn't christian doctrine until 400CE. Some Christians believe heaven is on earth itself and you'll be resurrected on earth, in your original body, when that times comes.

Makes sense. It wouldn’t be Heaven if you couldn’t order some tacos.

Re: Antiqua et Nova: Note on the relationship between AI and human intelligence

#268

Post by goatlover »

kouru225 wrote: post #50
radlad wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But there's nothing about AI in general that limits it to learning only from prior data Maybe not, but I don't think this is exactly what the piece said here: "AI, lacking a physical body, relies on computational reasoning and learning based on vast datasets that include recorded human experiences and knowledge." Do you think AI will soon get a physical body, and experience "sensory input, emotional responses, soci…

All these words, “sensory input, emotional responses, social interactions, and the unique context of each moment” are all words that we’ve developed and yet have no full understanding of. In any philosophy paper they’d be challenged in a second.

Philosophy of Mind papers uses that kind of language all the time. It's agreed that humans have sensory input and social interaction, those are facts of biology, psychology and sociology. It's also agreed that human bodies and brains are different in significant ways from modern computers and robots.

Re: Antiqua et Nova: Note on the relationship between AI and human intelligence

#269

Post by kouru225 »

radlad wrote: post #87
kouru225 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All these words, “sensory input, emotional responses, social interactions, and the unique context of each moment” are all words that we’ve developed and yet have no full understanding of. In any philosophy paper they’d be challenged in a second.

> Sensory input refers to the information received by the body's senses, like sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell, through sensory organs like the eyes, ears, skin, tongue, and nose, which is then transmitted to the brain as electrical signals for processing and interpretation; essentially, it's anything you perceive using your senses. Even if we are talking about the best cameras in the world, they pale in compa…

You’re looking at the world from a very anthropocentric pov. Sight, sound, touch, feel, taste are all human senses, but they’re all just one thing: ingesting information. An AI can ingest information… that’s just a fact… so… what are we talking about here?

Also, we have absolutely no idea how the brain works. Current AI was developed off of modern theories on how the brain works. Saying that AI doesn’t represent how the brain works is ridiculous because the whole story of AI was that we developed a theory of how the brain worked, modeled it through tech, and it worked way better than we thought it would. Shit there was a whole article here about how AI resembles Kant’s theory of the mind. Like I just don’t know how you can be so confident here.

Re: Antiqua et Nova: Note on the relationship between AI and human intelligence

#270

Post by kouru225 »

throw0101c wrote: post #101
kouru225 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah I want to see the numbers on this. Before technology we lived in feudalism. There’s no more unequal system than that.

> Before technology we lived in feudalism. There exists the possibility we have technology and feudalism. It also depends on how you define "technology": was/is the plough "technology"? The bow and arrow? Blacksmithing forge? Anvil? Water wheels? The wheel? The stirrup?

Ok, but the fact remains that in the past inequality was strictly enforced, while inequality in modern times has been systematically enforced. So I want numbers that show me that technology has increased wealth inequality.
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