Re: Remember "Bit-Slice" Chips ?

On Fri, 20 Dec 2024, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:

 just neurons involved. 'Mind' is an 'environment'.

 This is the truth! I like transhumanists as much as the next guy, but sometimes I think their technology optimists comes too close to religion for my comfort.

>
 Religions and related philosophies often think of
 some kind of magical 'essence of being' that can
 drift around. It's from the dark ages and beyond.
 Great for horror movie plots though.

So you don't think that we are all god, living in god, being gods parts and
components? ;)

 Quite often we see papers describing how any of dozens
 of 'helper' cells are modulating neuron activity on
 the large and small scale. Some have neuron-ish qualities
 unto themselves. The big blob of meat is a UNIT. You can
 digitize the fine state of every neuron and you'll just
 get an infunctional MESS on the other end.
>
 It's kinda All Or Nothing. We're not built like
 computers - 'evo-goo' instead.
>
 (hey, I *like* that term and officially claim it :-)

Well, I see nothing that says we wouldn't be able to live in another kind of
substrate if everything was simulated, but I find the philosophical questions of
if it would really be _us_ more interesting (assuming it works, of course).
I'm in the camp believing that if everything worked, and you have an uploaded
intelligence that for all intents and purposes acts like you, it wouldn't be
you. I like conscious continuity, but many transhumanists do not require that or
believe that.

Yes, I see no reason that should make uploading impossible, in theory, but we have no clue about how the mind works, so there could be plenty of reasons it won't work. Add to that the enormous quantum leap (or multiple quantum leaps) in technology, before being able to even physically replicate it. But with the religious, once I try that conversational track, I am shouted down and bood. =(

>
>
 IM-possible, no - but you're not just gonna do some
 kind of fancy MRI and transport a "mind" into any
 one or any thing.

Come on! You're being so negative. Show some faith!! ;) For me, the big problem
is that we don't (yet) know how to mind works and even what consciousness is, so
how can we replicate it?

So basically, they extrapolate from 1 + 1 = 2, to a billion trillion and often handwave away the steps in between. That is what makes some of them religious in my opinion.

>
 It's the 'hand-wave' thing that sunk the first AI paradigm.
 Marv Minsky (who posted on usenet for awhile) and friends
 saw how easily 'decisions' could be done with a transistor
 or two and assumed it would thus be easy to build an AI.
 AC Clarke used the Minsky optimism when fashioning the
 idea of "HAL".
>
 But it all imploded. Turned out there were billions of
 steps between input and that final, transistor-like,
 decision. A photo-lightswitch is not 'intelligent'.

But now we have LLM:s! ;) What I find interesting is how different people view
them. I find the free ones you can play with online to be incredibly boring. I
use them as a kind of search engine on steroids for stuff that is not important
(for entertainment purposes).
I would not trust them for anything business, there I must check manually to
make sure all is correct.
Then you have people who fall in love with their LLM. I find that incredible!
Would they have fallen in love with Eliza?

 As for "Robin Hoods" - there are many ways of looking
 at that paradigm. Who "deserves" what ... not so easy.

 Robin Hoods? You mean stealing from the government and giving to the people? The eternal libertarian hero?

>
 Um ... more 'commie' hero ....

Ahh... that spin of Robin Hood. It is not so good. =/ I read two of the older
editions Pyle and McFadden (I think) and there he seemed to be more
libertarian/anarchist than commie, always fighting the state.