Re: Some FT background stuff (guidelines for writers)

On Thu, 12 Feb 1998, Thomas Barclay wrote:

> Hmm. I'm in favor of your POV, but it may be the human is a tad more 
> complex than the model suggested. For us to assume we know what the 
> brain is or what a human is (as of yet) inherently questionable. 

You're making appeal to a line of reasoning that is inherently self
defeating.  Saying, 'I don't think we can know what this is' says
nothing
about our ability to build something that does a function better.  We
still don't know everything about the wing-operation of birds and yet I
can hop a plane to Colorado Springs in an hour and be there soon after,
faster than Canadian Geese can wing their way.

> But in the long run machines COULD be made smarter than man. People 
> tend to be making machines like SMARTER men. What isn't being asked 
> enough is WHY? Or whether it is a good idea or a desirable thing? Or 

See my previous post; I don't advocate making a computing center that's
a
'better man,' but a 'better pilot,' which is a far more specialized
thing.
I'll be happy if I can write an AI which uses laser-beaconing to
communicate short-range with its flock-mates who swarm upon the enemy
and
use utterly alien tactics to destroy them.

> if we make self-aware machines, other than to say we've done it, 

There is a line of philosophical thought (and one I largely share) that
suggests that self-awareness is a dead-end evolutionary track, that it
is
not a sufficently powerful tool, in and of itself, to continue
indefinitely in the human genome save as a vestigal reminder of what we
once were (are, temporally).  

Why build a self-aware fighter pilot who can say 'no' when I say 'blow
up
that hospital?'  Its a straw-man argument, since self-awareness is /not/
a
necessity for an entity to be better at a task than a human.

> the smarter you make a machine, the closer it will be to going "Who 
> the heck are you to be giving me orders?" or "Why should I do this 
> for you who just created me to die or to do labour for you?". 

Depends on how that machine-mind's constructed.  Consider that its
perfectly possible to brainwas a human into /not/ asking the above
questions.  How much easier a mind that never had an opportunity to
think
anything other?

> And yet a number of large scale computing problems (Deep Blue, some 
> math proofs) have recently taken advantage of massively parrallel 
> supercomputers to solve by exhaustive cases things that could not be 
> done any other way or to beat a human opponent. Don't rule out brute 
> force if you have the compute cycles. The phrase KISS still has 
> meaning, even in 2300.

If you have the compute cycles, being smart /and/ fast beats just being
smart.	:)

-- 
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