noen

"On the contrary, most people don't care whether it is conscious in some deep philosophical sense."

Do you mean that people don't care if they are philosophical zombies or not? I think they care very much. I also think that you're eliding the point a bit by using "deep" as a way to hand wave the problem away. The problem of consciousness is not some arcane issue that only matters to philosophers in their ivory towers. It is difficult. It is unsolved. And... and this is important. it is a very large problem, so large that we should not sp... (read more)

"Is this a variant of what it is like to be a bat?"

Is there something that it is like to be you? There are also decent arguments that qualia does matter. It is hardly a settled matter. If anything, the philosophical consensus is that qualia is important.

"Whether some AI has qualia or not doesn't change any of the external behavior,"

Yes, behaviorism is a very attractive solution. But presumably what people want is a living conscious artificial mind and not a useful house maid in robot form. I can get that functionality right now.

If I wr... (read more)

That is correct, you don't know what semantic content is.

"I still don't know what makes you so sure conciousness is impossible on an emulator."

For the same reason that I know simulated fire will not burn anything. In order for us to create an artificial mind, which certainly must be possible, we must duplicate the causal relations that exist in real consciousnesses.

Let us imagine that you go to your doctor and he says, "You're heart is shot. We need to replace it. Lucky for you we have miniature super computer we can stick into your chest th... (read more)

Meaning.

The words on this page mean things. They are intended to refer to other things.

"Because the telegraph analogy is actually a pretty decent analogy."

No it isn't. Constructing analogies is for poets and fiction writers. Science does not construct analogies. The force on an accelerating mass isn't analogous to F=ma, it IS F=ma. If what you said is true, that neurons are like telegraph stations and their dendrites the wires then it could not be true that neurons can communicate without a direct connection or "wire" between them. Neurons can communicate without any synaptic connection between them (See: "Neurons Ta... (read more)

"What do you mean by "strong AI is refuted""

The strong AI hypothesis is that consciousness is the software running on the hardware of the brain. Therefore one does not need to know or understand how brains actually work to construct a living conscious mind. Thus any system that implements the right computer program with the right inputs and outputs has cognition in exactly the same literal sense that human beings have understanding, thought and memory. It was the belief of strong AI proponents such as Marvin Minski at MIT and others tha... (read more)

Vacuums exist. Nearly frictionless planes and more or less perfectly rigid bodies actually exist. There is nothing wrong with abstraction based on objective reality. Claiming that one is about to declare how economies ought to work is not a abstraction based on a preexisting reality. It is attempting to impose one's own subjective needs wants and desires on reality.

That is not science, that is pseudoscience.

Spherical cow is not "how science is done". It is a joke. Jokes rely on reversing expectations, going counter to reality, for the surprise el... (read more)

Is there something that it is like to be Siri? Still, Siri is a tool and potentially a powerful one. But I feel no need to be afraid of Siri as Siri any more than I am afraid of nuclear weapons in themselves. What frightens me is how people might misuse them. Not the tools themselves. Focusing on the tools then does not address the root issue. Which is human nature and what social structures we have in place to make sure some clown doesn't build a nuke in his basement.

Did ELIZA present the "dangers and promises" of AI? Weizenbaum's secretary thou... (read more)

I cannot imagine why this:

"Here at UR, "economics" is not the study of how real economies work. It is the study of how economies should work "

should not bring to mind this:

"Here at Fantasy University, "physics" is not the study of how real physical principles work. It is the study of how physics should work."

or should not raise giant red flags that you are about to be fed a steaming pile of horse shit. I don't know about everyone else but for me the moment anyone purports to dictate how the world ought to be over and... (read more)

I predict that the search for AI will continue to live up to it's proud tradition of failing to produce a viable AI for the indefinite future. Since the Chinese Room argument does refute the strong AI hypothesis no AI will be possible on current hardware. An artificial brain that duplicates the causal functioning of an organic brain is necessary before an AI can be constructed.

I further predict that AI researchers will continue to predict immanent AI in direct proportion to research grant dollars they are able to attract. Corollary: A stable nuclear fusion reactor will be built before a truly conscious artificial mind is. Neither of which will happen in the lifetime of anyone reading this.

Among candidate stars for going nova I would think you could treat it as a random event. But Sol is not a candidate and so doesn't even make it into the sample set. So it's a very badly constructed setup. It's like looking for a needle in 200 million haystacks but restricting yourself only to those haystacks you already know it cannot be in. Or do I have that wrong.

How about "the probability of our sun going nova is zero and 36 times zero is still zero"?

Although... continuing with the XKCD theme if you divide by zero perhaps that would increase the odds. ;)