Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 65 (9164 total)
8 online now:
Newest Member: ChatGPT
Post Volume: Total: 916,919 Year: 4,176/9,624 Month: 1,047/974 Week: 6/368 Day: 6/11 Hour: 1/2


Thread  Details

Email This Thread
Newer Topic | Older Topic
  
Author Topic:   You are.
bkelly
Inactive Member


Message 223 of 275 (260725)
11-17-2005 8:44 PM
Reply to: Message 210 by nwr
11-13-2005 8:49 PM


true or false is misleading
nwr writes:
Computers, robots, etc, are usually taken as not having free will. Based on what I have suggested above, you can see why. For a computer makes its decision entirely on the basis of truth or falsity. It has no capability of making pragmatic judgements. And no software program can change that. The program can control which truth and falsity conditions are examined, but it cannot act in ways that would correspond to making pragmatic judgements.
I worry about getting off topic, but while your concept is correct, it is technically incorrect. Computers make decisions based on:
is A < B
is A = B
is A > B
and combinations thereof. Truth or false has implications beyond what I think you intended.
However, we (programmers, software engineers) are learning to put together combinations of these comparisons in ever new manners. We are learning ways to generate probabilities then throw in a toss of the dice according to the calculated probabilities. (to over simplify) The result is computer programming that can sometimes be (intentionally) unpredictable and can come up with the right answer for unknown reasons. In other words, we are aproaching the point of computers being able to make pragmatic decisions. There is much more but that is way off topic.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 210 by nwr, posted 11-13-2005 8:49 PM nwr has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 224 by nwr, posted 11-17-2005 9:30 PM bkelly has replied

bkelly
Inactive Member


Message 225 of 275 (260866)
11-18-2005 8:26 AM
Reply to: Message 224 by nwr
11-17-2005 9:30 PM


Opinion are extremely complex
Re: These aren't choices that can easily be settled by true/false decisions.
I completely agree. (and I was a bit pedantic in my protest) Just laying out the concepts that can go into those kinds of decisions still remain beyond our ability. This is part of the reason that we are so far from the realization of a computer or any artificial device with a sense of self.
We do have computer systems that can be called expert systems in that thay possess the knowledge (rules to be more precise) to perform compex tasks. But in my opinion, we have not reached the point of being able to create AI (Artificial Intelligence). No computer can sense and form a comprehension of someting it has never "seen" before and incorporate new rules and insructions into its programming to deal with that new something.
The brain is thousands if not many millions of simple computers put together in marvelously complex patterns to create, returning to the topic, I AM and YOU ARE.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 224 by nwr, posted 11-17-2005 9:30 PM nwr has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 226 by crashfrog, posted 11-18-2005 10:42 AM bkelly has not replied

Newer Topic | Older Topic
Jump to:


Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved

™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024