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Subject: Re: To Robert Hyatt, Dan Corbit, Christophe Theron , And Other Experts.

Author: Russell Reagan

Date: 14:24:40 08/05/02

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On August 05, 2002 at 16:30:40, Louis Fagliano wrote:

>A computer is a machine that follows a set of instructions without question.

And how do you know that a human is not? You can take any decision you've ever
made, and there is no way for you to prove that it wasn't something that was
preprogrammed into you by aliens. If you can prove that, I'd be very interested
:)

With that said, if you continue with your line of thinking, you cannot claim
that humans are intelligent either. I guess it's fine if you want to accept
both, but I don't think you can claim one while denying the other. I think the
best you can do with that line of thought is to claim that computers are not
intelligent, and humans might be.

>If
>you want me to say "I think" then I'll say "I think" this is not a sign of
>intellegence, since a human, if given a set of instructions can always choose to
>inprovise or decide not to follow the instructions at all.  Isn't the power or
>ability to improvise or decide not to take action at all what really defines
>intellegence?
>
>I'll believe computers are intellegent when they question their programming.
>For example, if you decide to create a personality in Chessmaster and want it to
>play chess weakly so you can beat it and set the value for a knight higher than
>that of a queen, and the thing spits back at you "No way!  I'm not going to play
>chess like that.  I'll lose!", then we will have true computer intellengence.
>
>And no fair writing a subroutine into a chess program where if the user changes
>certain parameters to make the program play weaker chess it tells you "Sorry
>buddy.  No can do."  That's still human generated and not the real thing.

All of these things are things that you assume a human does because it's
"intelligent." A human might very well be programmed to take a particular
action, and you just assume it was an "on the fly" choice, or an improvisation.
You can't simulate it and run the program more than once, so you can't know what
would have happened if you chose something different, or if you even have that
power to begin with.

Russell



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