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From: John Stafford on 4 Jun 2010 19:56
In article <WOOdnQflL73qFJTRnZ2dnUVZ_uSdnZ2d(a)earthlink.com>,
huge <huge(a)nomailaddress.com> wrote:

> John Stafford :
>
> > In article <WOOdnQXlL70AH5TRnZ2dnUVZ_uSdnZ2d(a)earthlink.com>,
> > huge <huge(a)nomailaddress.com> wrote:
> >
> >> John Stafford :
> >
> >> > Seeing is not understanding.
> >>
> >> No, *literally*, seeing is certainly not understanding. But you can
> >> say "x sees it that way" and *mean* the same thing as "x understands it
> >> that way." It is idiomatic for native speakers of English.
> >
> > Within the most popular paradigm, we can presume that X sees something
> > and I see the same. It is like seeing a color, perhaps pure red. It is
> > provable that any person with the normative eyesight sees the same red.
> > This is experience, not understanding.
> >
> > But for more complex events, seeing is not understanding. But you and I
> > know that.
>
> Do you understand the difference between a *literal* usage
> of a phrase and a *metaphorical* or *analogical* use of a phrase?

Of course I understand the difference. I am merely asserting the idea
that, for the most part, we have a common understanding of objects that
we see in everyday life. Persons who express wildly divergent objections
to the same have either original insight or they are just engineering
some kind of unique net-identity and it is unlikely they could actually
live in such a mental state - just walking down the street would be a
challenge if they believe the nonsense they post here.
From: mrdilligent on 5 Jun 2010 14:29
I can't follow who said what in this thread; Somebody said:

<< If an automaton can drive itself a distance of two hundred miles
> > >> across a tremendously forbidding desert terrain, how can this feat be
> > >> called merely a 'simulation"? It is certainly as genuine an act of
> > >> survival in the hostile environment as that of a mosquito flying about
> > >> a <]room and avoiding being swatted>>

Apple-and-orange comparisons, conflations galore, and all manner of
implied non sequiturs in this passage. Not to mention that one of the
main non-scientific "scientific" questions of today raises its
irrelevant and nonfactual head here: Do computers think?

An automaton does not drive itself. It may seem to the spurious
minded that it is doing just that, but just ask a few questions: How
does the automaton fuel itself??? Answer: It doesn't; it takes HUMANS
to provide it with its fuel. 200 mi is a long distance for even a
car, so it must have to be refueled along the way. HUMANS must do
this by prearranging fuel stops for it.

And apart from the fuel, what DOES drive it? A HUMANLY written
program.

How much do you guys know about computers? Their history? From
Babbage to those giant boards with light bulbs which the women of WWII
had to screw in for ON and out for OFF, to vacuum tubes, to
transisters, to the present-day IC, the basic principle is one and the
same: currents of electrons, better yet, photons, stream like water
(only faster) from one "gate" to the next, according to the program
written for it.

Without fuel and the program, a computer is just a compilation of
useless matter. That goes for automatons and robots, too, as they are
comeputer-run. Do you think the automaton feels the heat of the
"forbbidding desert"? the cold of the frozen tundra? the wetnesss if
any puddle it must cross? the flames of an unexpected forest fire?

No, none of that. Unless the HUMANS built avoidance maneuvers into
the program, any metal of the automaton's makeup rusts, and/or the
flames melt it into a lump. How's that for survival?

"Extreme environment" has nothing to do with it; robots are utilized
to go where living organisms, including humans, cannot go. That is
one of their functions. They feel nothing, they experience nothing,
know nothing.

The difference between an automaton and a human, and for a mosquito,
too, as far as that goes, is that the living being can EXPERIENCE, and
then try to come up with the best solution to any problems that
arise---without a program to run it. No one has to anticipate in
advance all the kinds of problems that might arise; only the
individula human or mosquito can do that for itself.

Let me put it to you this way: Is a river intelligent? It runs
itself, and even makes "decisions" such as eroding the erodable where
it meets a steep blockage, and thus reroutes itself. Except that it
does NOT reroute ITSELF, gravity reroutes the flow of water by way of
the lowest level of passage.. I am sure that few would say that a
river was intelligent, yet a computer is also just a stream---of
electrons or photons. The stream cannot flow through the "gates." but
it can go around them---to the next "gate." It is the carefully coded
program that steers the stream to the next "gate, " and to the next,
and so on, so that the robot implements the program written (by
HUMANS) for it. In general, if the human programmers failed to
anticipate an obstacle, the robot will not be able to proceed. In a
way, this is what happened to Spirit on the surface of Mars.

There have been a few cases where computers "healed" themselves; a
faulty program forced the stream where it could not go, so the stream
headed for the nearest "logical" gate, and proceeded from there. To
the human users' amazement, the computer had solved the probelem set
for it despite the faulty program!

Computers cannot survive or die; only living organisms can do that.
Sure, a computer can rust, or melt, and eventually its material makeup
will entropize, but only a living organism can die, and when it does,
its material makeup entropizes rather swiftly under normal
circumstances, It may become fodder for parasites, scavengers, and
predators, or it may simply turn smelly or desicated. More
importantly, though, a living organism can possibly come up with
strategies for survival when it is threatened. A robot can do that
ONLY when humans build a suitable strategy into its program.

Finally, since computers don't have minds, there will never be another
H.A.L.---unless we come to understand schizophrenia so well that we
can program its surrogate into the computer.

It is the unfortunate conventional misusage of language that leads us
into such silly ideas as computers being the next stage of evolution,
mastering the human race, etc. Cosmologists insist on speaking of a
star's death and birth. Of course, stars are not born, nor do they
die. They come into existence, surely, and though they almost never
go out of existence, their forms do change---from a bright star to a
supernova, or perhaps to a brown dwarf, etc. Nor do galaxies
canabalize one another! Owing to the characteristics of matter and
the immutable laws of it, they do "collide," but it is perhaps more
realistic to think of this as crosspartitioning of sets, since the
hydrogen and other materials let loose form an area for new stars to
come into existence. Chrosspartitioning inevitably leads to new sets.

Another example of language misuse is the use of _language_ in
connection with computers. Computers have no tongues, no oral
appendages! HUMANS use codes for computers, and, at base, these are 0s
and 1s. The "higher level languages" used in computer programming are
these binary codes elevated to a communication state which is more
compatible with the human mind. The computer itself doesn't care a
fig. All that is needed is Os for OFF and 1s for ON, and this is what
guides the streams to or around the "gates."

So pay no attention to statements such as "The computer does/doesn't
understand," the computer learns," etc. etc.








From: mrdilligent on 5 Jun 2010 14:33
Of all the verbiage in the post of Immortalist on May 31, this
replying paragraph by "Ed" makes the most consistent sense:

Date: Wed, Jun 2 2010 8:28 am
From: Ed


<<"Mind" is not well defined. Your example of ways to research it
shows
good science but may be looking at something that is not what most of
us think of as "mind". Using Fred Martin's post above it's as if she
is studying what he calls the physical structures when she should be
studying the information structures that the physical structures
support. Of course the two are closely tied, it's not either or but a
matter of emphasis or slant.>>

I agree that studying mind and studying brain are two entirely
different studyings. I don't agree with anything that says
epiphenominalism is good science. Using scanners and blood-chemistry
techniques are only good technology, not necessarily good science. We
use technology today to help us figure things out, but it is WHAT is
figured out that is, or is not, science. And most of what has been
"figured out" by use of these technologies is, IMO, most assuredly not
good (or real) science.

Which is why I WAS intrigued by the opening paragraphs of
Immortalist's post.
From: mrdilligent on 5 Jun 2010 14:42
Date: Thurs, Jun 3 2010 6:34 am
From: huge

<<The evidence for identity in the sense I am using it has to do with
the way
ideas and large sets of ideas spread from person to person while
remaining
the very same idea; one might say that I am housing a little bit of
Democritus
and Xenophon in my head right now>>

Very poor conjuncting, this seriation of ideas of 1., ideas spreading
from person to person, 2., an idea remaining one and the same idea,
and 3., personally housing a bit of Democritus and Xenophone in your
own head, as if they were all part of a single, multipart idea.

Each of these is a very separate idea in its own right, and a complex
one, at that.

Any idea, be it simple or a vast set, is itself; it can be found
independently (from experience and thought) by any one or more
unrelated people. It can be false, partly false, or entirely true,
but it can still be had by anyone at any time.

Separate from this fact, but in addition to it, ideas--true or false---
can spread from person or culture to person or culture by way of some
form of expression. But it must be remembered that any person can
come up with the same idea without any spread, any form of expression
other than his own. Why, he might even imove on it!

Unfortunately for the modern world, and most especially the 21st c,
most people get "their" ideas from books---and the author of any book
may himself make many errors of fact. These errors spread like
wildfire, not only because there are so many readers of that book, but
also in discussions of the book among people. This is all too clearly
demonstrated in this thread.

But even if the author makes not a one tiny error, his readers may
well misinterpret what he wrote in his book. This is because too many
people "read" according to their own personal mental set, and assume
that the author of the book said what he did not say, but it "matched"
what the reader himself believed.

As for Xenophone and Democritus, you probably got what of them you
carry in your own head from reading, or from an instructor, or from a
summary, etc. Did you UNDERSTAND what Xenophone had in HIS own head?
what Democritus had in his own head? You can't get that from reading,
an instructor, or a summary.

One doesn't need to know much about early 20th c science to get the
idea that matter is made up of fundamental particles, or what
Democritus in proper ancient Greek called "atoms," or to reallize that
physicists have used that ancient word incorrectly. Our "atom" is
actually an anatomic entity! Over the last few centuries,
scientists' nomenclature went from _mole_ (a wad of a substance), to
_molecule_ (a little mole), to "atom." They shouldn't have jumped the
gun, but called the newly imagined form a "moleculette" (a little
little mole) in which case they they wouldn't have burdened themselves
with "subatomic particles." As of now, they refer to so-called
"subatomic particles" as fundamental particles---which is just what
the Greek word means.

Speaking of erroneous ideas spreading, you must have heard it said
that the ancient Greek Atomists were very clever, remarkably so,
considering they lacked our technology, but (evil grin) they were
largely wrong. Well, if you believe that, get yourself a copy of what
the Atomists claimed for THEIR atom and what our physicists claim for
theirs: Conpare the Greeks' atoms with our fundamental particles, and
you will see that the ancients were alnost exactly on the money!

The point of all this is that one must use his OWN mind,
independently, on what he reads---and not just in subjective agreement
or disagreement (as it appears to be the case in this thread). The
object is to FIND the TRUTH, rather than just agree or disagree with
others.
From: Ghod Dhammit on 5 Jun 2010 16:42
On 6/5/2010 1:29 PM, mrdilligent wrote:
[snip vacuous rant]

My, so many words, merely to say nothing. Your mother must be proud.
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