Machines and the mind September 10, 2006
Posted by mwj as mind, philosophy, self. trackback.Less than a month before world chess champion Gary Kasparov was defeated by Deep Blue, Harper’s Magazine held a forum entitled “Our Machines, Ourselves.” The dialogue has been included in the coursepaq (Doede’s spelling) for a course I am taking entitled “Philosophy of the Mind.” Below are some excerpts:
“The only instinct that has proved more consistently human than our drive to invent tools has been our need to demonstrate our superiority over them.”
“The machine would be interesting if it not only won but found new ways of winning.”
“Increasingly, we don’t have the ability to make sense of the trillions of pieces of information we receive each day… Computers are very good at examining these huge databases and noticing patterns we are oblivious to.”
“Chess after Deep Blue becomes something like fencing–an aesthetic activity that can be enjoyed in a nostalgic way and as something that is good for the spirit, but one that no longer feels like exploring the outer edge of human ability. Chess becomes like karate after the nuclear bomb.”
“the more we unshoulder these burdens to our machinery, the more we become our essence.”
“I think that the fundamental process of conversation is one of the great miracles of nature, that two people communicating with each other is an extraordinary phenomenon that has so far defied all attempts to capture it.”
“At the same time science is improving its ability to simulate some tasks that we used to think of as being in the domain of the brain–like chess–we are also seeing a rise in religious fundamentalism around the world.”
“People don’t feel the spiritual strength to turn down technology in the cases where it diminishes rather than makes better the texture of their lives.”
“One of the things that make people is the profound desire to believe that we’re unique.”
“[Nabokov] describes the art process as a dismantling and reassembling of the moment with such suppleness and simultaneity that the reader gets some approximation of the very experience that moved the artist. If one day a computer could do that kind of decoding…”
“If you accept computer-written novels, has the computer been elevated or has your humanity been reduced?”
“Is the only source of human specialness the fact that we can communicate among ourselves?”
“Consciousness is the experience of experience itself.”
“Consciousness is a very lonely entity.”
“Isn’t it magical how humanity persists even as we try to isolate what we thought made it up.”
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Law and Second Life: a class? At Harvard? At Harvard Law?
Yep. You can participate too
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/cyberone/
seems that this fits in well here…
Ode To Spot
by Data, for the episode “Schims” - Star Trek the Next Generation
Felis Cattus, is your taxonomic nomenclature,
an endothermic quadruped carnivorous by nature?
Your visual, olfactory and auditory senses
contribute to your hunting skills, and natural defenses.
I find myself intrigued by your subvocal oscillations,
a singular development of cat communications
that obviates your basic hedonistic predilection
for a rhythmic stroking of your fur, to demonstrate affection.
A tail is quite essential for your acrobatic talents;
you would not be so agile if you lacked its counterbalance.
And when not being utilized to aide in locomotion,
it often serves to illustrate the state of your emotion.
O Spot, the complex levels of behaviour you display
connote a fairly well-developed cognitive array.
And though you are not sentient, Spot, and do not comprehend,
I nonetheless consider you a true and valued friend.