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Do minds exist?

This conversation is reminding me of the concept of ghosts in Ghost in the Shell.

"Humans are self-aware and machines aren't."
"How do you know?"
"Because humans have ghosts, and machines don't."
"What is a ghost?"
"It's something that humans have and machines don't."

I'm a fan of Ghost in the Shell, but I always thought that ghosts were a mere tautology humans made up to convince ourselves that we are special. I like to think the author did that on purpose to point out how silly humans can be on this topic.
 
bilby said:
Why does a self aware machine need to be a robot? Surely it is just as reasonable for a bank of servers in a datacentre somewhere to become self-aware? If it did, how would we tell?
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Heinlein went there in his The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. The master computer became self aware and eventually led the residents of the penal-colony-Moon in a war for independence.
How do you know that I am not just such a machine?
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We wouldn't. In fact it is a useful model: We are biological machines.
 
Underseer said:
This conversation is reminding me of the concept of ghosts in Ghost in the Shell.

"Humans are self-aware and machines aren't."
"How do you know?"
"Because humans have ghosts, and machines don't."
"What is a ghost?"
"It's something that humans have and machines don't."

I'm a fan of Ghost in the Shell, but I always thought that ghosts were a mere tautology humans made up to convince ourselves that we are special. I like to think the author did that on purpose to point out how silly humans can be on this topic.
Click to expand...


We know humans are self aware only by being a human and by being self aware and by making an assumption. We assume other humans are like us.

And we are self aware. At least I am.

It is no ghost. Although matter has become a ghost.
 
George S said:
Heinlein went there in his The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. The master computer became self aware and eventually led the residents of the penal-colony-Moon in a war for independence.
How do you know that I am not just such a machine?
Click to expand...

We wouldn't. In fact it is a useful model: We are biological machines.
Click to expand...

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress has the computers become self aware due to being interconnected in a sufficiently complex way; it is a fascinating idea, but rather simplistic as it turns out. Not that I fault Heinlein for it, as computers were truly primitive at the time; He basically invented CGI, with the computer adding itself as a fictional human person to a live video stream - which he imagined requiring the entire computing resources of the colony to achieve.
 
bilby said:
George S said:
Heinlein went there in his The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. The master computer became self aware and eventually led the residents of the penal-colony-Moon in a war for independence.


We wouldn't. In fact it is a useful model: We are biological machines.
Click to expand...

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress has the computers become self aware due to being interconnected in a sufficiently complex way; it is a fascinating idea, but rather simplistic as it turns out. Not that I fault Heinlein for it, as computers were truly primitive at the time; He basically invented CGI, with the computer adding itself as a fictional human person to a live video stream - which he imagined requiring the entire computing resources of the colony to achieve.
Click to expand...

And then there is Asimov. In one story (I forget the name) he has the master computer give deliberately wrong answers. Its logic is that there is no human success without the possibility of human failure. Providing a perfect, safe, stable environment for humans demeans them. There is no striving. No goals. No meaning. So it quits in the best interest of humanity.
 
George S said:
bilby said:
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress has the computers become self aware due to being interconnected in a sufficiently complex way; it is a fascinating idea, but rather simplistic as it turns out. Not that I fault Heinlein for it, as computers were truly primitive at the time; He basically invented CGI, with the computer adding itself as a fictional human person to a live video stream - which he imagined requiring the entire computing resources of the colony to achieve.
Click to expand...

And then there is Asimov. In one story (I forget the name) he has the master computer give deliberately wrong answers. Its logic is that there is no human success without the possibility of human failure. Providing a perfect, safe, stable environment for humans demeans them. There is no striving. No goals. No meaning. So it quits in the best interest of humanity.
Click to expand...

And then there is 'The machine that won the war', in which everyone is following the guidance of a master computer to select the best option from a bewildering array of apparently equal choices - except for the computer operator, who realises that the information input could never be both accurate and complete, and so chooses the output by flipping a coin.

Perhaps that is the main difference between natural and artificial intelligence - natural intelligences need a good enough answer - and recognise that even a wrong answer is better than none; and they reject implausible answers even if there is evidence to support them.

If you have seen IBMs Watson on Jepardy, then you will have seen the difference - Watson gets lots of answers right, but when it is wrong, it is wrong in ways that seem bizarre to humans.
 
fromderinside said:
None of this matters because man, like machines, have no mind. Self anything is just a phenomenon as are anyone's presumptions about others. Conceit is that which one needs to justify to oneself of one's value where there may no such thing.
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Man is a machine with a mind.

This cannot be doubted.

To doubt demonstrates one has a mind.
 
Juma said:
bilby said:
even a wrong answer is better than none;
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Which is wrong.
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Not at all.

If you are in the middle of a road, and a truck suddenly comes racing towards you, you need to decide which side of the road to jump to to escape.

The optimum answer takes a while to figure out; the right answer saves your life; the wrong answer has an 80% chance of saving your life; no answer at all is certainly fatal.

More real world decisions are like this than are like traditional logic puzzles where there is one right answer and all others - including no answer at all - are equally wrong.
 
bilby said:
Juma said:
Which is wrong.
Click to expand...

Not at all.

If you are in the middle of a road, and a truck suddenly comes racing towards you, you need to decide which side of the road to jump to to escape.

The optimum answer takes a while to figure out; the right answer saves your life; the wrong answer has an 80% chance of saving your life; no answer at all is certainly fatal.

More real world decisions are like this than are like traditional logic puzzles where there is one right answer and all others - including no answer at all - are equally wrong.
Click to expand...

But then it is not a wrong answer.
The problem is the question.
 
untermensche said:
fromderinside said:
None of this matters because man, like machines, have no mind. Self anything is just a phenomenon as are anyone's presumptions about others. Conceit is that which one needs to justify to oneself of one's value where there may no such thing.
Click to expand...

Man is a machine with a mind.

This cannot be doubted.

To doubt demonstrates one has a mind.
Click to expand...
Our main difference is one of us talks to himself while the other communicates with others.
 
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