Philosophy

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CyberTractor
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Philosophy

Postby CyberTractor » 08 Feb 2007, 19:17

Anybody want to read my philosophy essay?

The topic is "Can a machine know?".
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Kawaiicaps
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Postby Kawaiicaps » 08 Feb 2007, 19:24

Um..... I don't

No offence but "essay" is only fun when its what you call your friend.

Hey essay, Bring be another beer!


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Postby Melendwyr » 08 Feb 2007, 19:26

I'll read it. I'm PMing you with my email address.
"...so he turns to me, and he says 'Why so serious?' He puts the blade in my mouth, and says 'Why so serious?
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Postby Kawaiicaps » 08 Feb 2007, 19:28

So i'm unintrested in education..... sue me.




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CyberTractor
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Postby CyberTractor » 08 Feb 2007, 19:30

Education and philosophy don't necessarily go hand in hand.

Philosophy is the study of how we as humans view the world around us. Education is boring.

There's the big difference.
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Dana
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Postby Dana » 08 Feb 2007, 19:36

Would your essay make a computer geek with a passion for machine learning angry? Because I know a lot about machine learning.
"I swear it," said the other mother. "I swear it on my own mother's grave."

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Postby Melendwyr » 08 Feb 2007, 19:46

No, it wouldn't.

It's too short, I think, and it needs some stylistic improvement.
"...so he turns to me, and he says 'Why so serious?' He puts the blade in my mouth, and says 'Why so serious?
Let's put a smile on that face!
'"
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Dana
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Postby Dana » 08 Feb 2007, 19:48

Send away then. I know about knowing machines, and I can write quite well on occasion.
"I swear it," said the other mother. "I swear it on my own mother's grave."



"Does she have a grave?" asked Coraline.



"Oh yes," said the other mother. "I put her in there myself. And when I found her trying to crawl out, I put her back."
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Postby CyberTractor » 08 Feb 2007, 19:49

Yeah, it only has to be between 1200 and 1600 words. My diagram added me the needed word count to put me in range.

Dana, PM me your email and I'll send it.
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Postby Dana » 08 Feb 2007, 19:56

Done and done.
"I swear it," said the other mother. "I swear it on my own mother's grave."



"Does she have a grave?" asked Coraline.



"Oh yes," said the other mother. "I put her in there myself. And when I found her trying to crawl out, I put her back."
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Postby Number09 » 08 Feb 2007, 20:31

I probably bombed philosophy...
Last edited by Number09 on 18 Feb 2007, 00:15, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby CyberTractor » 08 Feb 2007, 20:35

That... sucks...?
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Postby Lacerta » 08 Feb 2007, 22:59

A more interesting question is, Can a person know?
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Lord Chrusher
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Postby Lord Chrusher » 08 Feb 2007, 23:08

How do you define "know"?

I would say that a computer "knows". It knows that if I misspell knows in a text area in Firefox it should underline it with a wavy red line.

w00t 600th post.
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Postby CyberTractor » 08 Feb 2007, 23:34

Ahh, but does it really know that the word is mispelled, or does it simply recognize that the word does not match up with something currently in its dictionary? As we all know, MS Word has the handy "add to dictionary" button to correct spelling "errors".
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Postby The Hitman » 09 Feb 2007, 00:32

If you're asking what machines can 'learn' and 'know' from a technical standpoint, that's very clearly understood. After all, someone had to write the algorithms in the first place.

If you're asking whether machines can 'know' like humans know, we run into the problem that we really have no idea how it is that humans themselves know, so there's not much of a basis for comparison.

I wouldn't say that a dictionary lookup is anything more than vaguely analogous to the idea of knowledge, but there are certainly better examples one could go into about machine learning.
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Postby TheRocket » 09 Feb 2007, 02:27

Agreed!

Philosophy - another beer!!!
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Postby The Hitman » 09 Feb 2007, 10:56

Man, that's my favorite philosophy of all.
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Postby Dana » 09 Feb 2007, 20:30

I am a fan of beer-philosphy...particularly dark beer philosphy.
"I swear it," said the other mother. "I swear it on my own mother's grave."



"Does she have a grave?" asked Coraline.



"Oh yes," said the other mother. "I put her in there myself. And when I found her trying to crawl out, I put her back."
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Postby Alja-Markir » 09 Feb 2007, 22:27

A machine is limited by physics. Anything a computer does, it does because it is obeying the laws of physics.

It doesn't "know" anything, arguably for a number of reasons:

1) Lack of Cognition
2) Lack of Sentience
3) Lack of Instinct

In the first instance, cognition is the ability to reason or think, something a machine can simulate, but not do. If you place a machine at idle, it will not change at all unless it is acted upon by external forces. It will not start to 'daydream' or 'think' unless it is told what to do and how to do it in order to simulate such occurances.

In the second instance, sentience is the attribute of self awareness, identity of self, or even merely acceptance of a perceived reality. Machines lack any form of sentience, as they are simply a collective system of substances operating under the parameters of physics.

In the third instance, instinct refers to biological forces that we cannot adequately explain. When you wiggle your finger, your body sends electrical impulses down your nervous system, and a very complex series of events happens. The trigger for these impulses, the cause for the change from system idle to action, is unknown.

Similarly, organic growth can be said to follow a organizational pattern which is only partly explained by physics, the rest being determinate of (we assume) randomness and this unknown "instinct". Machines, follow only physical laws, with randomness playing only a minor role in outcomes and events. Instinct, although undefined, is a variable that is not present in terms of inorganic machines, and is thus not applicable.

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Postby TheRocket » 10 Feb 2007, 01:03

Alja-Markir wrote:A machine is limited by physics. Anything a computer does, it does because it is obeying the laws of physics.

It doesn't "know" anything, arguably for a number of reasons:

1) Lack of Cognition
2) Lack of Sentience
3) Lack of Instinct

In the first instance, cognition is the ability to reason or think, something a machine can simulate, but not do. If you place a machine at idle, it will not change at all unless it is acted upon by external forces. It will not start to 'daydream' or 'think' unless it is told what to do and how to do it in order to simulate such occurances.

In the second instance, sentience is the attribute of self awareness, identity of self, or even merely acceptance of a perceived reality. Machines lack any form of sentience, as they are simply a collective system of substances operating under the parameters of physics.

In the third instance, instinct refers to biological forces that we cannot adequately explain. When you wiggle your finger, your body sends electrical impulses down your nervous system, and a very complex series of events happens. The trigger for these impulses, the cause for the change from system idle to action, is unknown.

Similarly, organic growth can be said to follow a organizational pattern which is only partly explained by physics, the rest being determinate of (we assume) randomness and this unknown "instinct". Machines, follow only physical laws, with randomness playing only a minor role in outcomes and events. Instinct, although undefined, is a variable that is not present in terms of inorganic machines, and is thus not applicable.

~Alja-Markir~


So yeah, I Ctrl'd F'd this with 'beer' and the search results were 0.

Philosophy, you failed me tonight. Beer was nowhere to be found at work!
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Postby Lord Chrusher » 10 Feb 2007, 01:29

Alja-Markir, you are basing your argument on knowledge being based on something beyond the laws of physics. Since there is no proof or disproof that knowledge in humans is based on something beyond the laws of physics it is entirely possible and quite likely that human knowledge is only dependent of the laws of physics. If a human is purely physical then it is quite possible to have a machine the acts just like a human. If a human is purely physical then is not to far to consider a human a machine. If a human is a machine then a machine could know since humans can know.

Arguments based on what a computer can do are invalid they are only one type of machine. Computers are designed to do exactly what you tell them to. That a computer is unable do something you did not tell it to do does mean that all machines are unable to do something of its own accord. Computers are very good at some types of reasoning - if they were not they would be useless to us.

Again there is no proof that sentience is independent of the laws of physics. If you define sentience as the "mere acceptance of a perceived reality" then a computer is sentient. A computer accepts unquestioningly its inputs and acts upon them therefore accepting its perceived reality. By your logic then a computer is sentient.

Because we can not explain all instincts does not imply that they are not explainable by the laws of physics. Nor does complexity imply a non physical explanation. At the cellular level just about all processes can be explained by chemical processes which are physical processes. Again just because we can not currently explain all of them does not imply that they are unexplainable.

Randomness is extremely important to physical processes. The process that allow your computer to run and heat your house are based on a large amount randomness. Most of modern physics is based on processes that are non deterministic. Most machines contain parts that are organic as they contain carbon based molecules such as plastics. Machines do exist such as DNA based computers that use biochemical molecules.

Labeling presently unknown causes as ill defined instincts then say that they are unexplainable is bad science. My inborn instinct to trust my kin more than stranger is not dissimilar from a computer being programed to only trust input from selected users.

The current lack of a physical explanation for biological phenomena does not in any way imply that those phenomena are unexplainable.
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Postby Lord Chrusher » 10 Feb 2007, 01:32

Immanuel Kant was a real pissant
Who was very rarely stable.

Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
Who could think you under the table.

David Hume could out-consume
Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, [some versions have 'Schopenhauer and Hegel']

And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
Who was just as schloshed as Schlegel.

There's nothing Nietzsche couldn't teach ya
'Bout the raising of the wrist.
Socrates, himself, was permanently pissed.

John Stuart Mill, of his own free will,
On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.

Plato, they say, could stick it away--
Half a crate of whisky every day.

Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle.
Hobbes was fond of his dram,

And René Descartes was a drunken fart.
'I drink, therefore I am.'

Yes, Socrates, himself, is particularly missed,
A lovely little thinker,
But a bugger when he's pissed.

Eric Idle, Monty Python

There I have given you two types of philosophy. Take your pick.
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Postby CyberTractor » 10 Feb 2007, 01:51

Alja-Markir, you also ignore our way of knowing. We know because of emotion, perception, and reasoning. Computers have two ways of knowing. A computer's perception and reasoning are as involuntary as our own. We cannot control our emotions, our reasoning, and we have limited control over our perception. How do we differ that much from our comptuers?

You say computers don't have cognition, sentience, or instinct, therefore they cannot know.

Cognition - Computers react to a set dichotomy. Humans do, too, however ours is more complex. Computers can take in only a few pieces of information that they have been aware of by their programmers, and we can only take in information dictated by our five physical sensations. There can be many different ways to interpret reality, but we can only fathom the five we are accustomed to because we have no idea how to cognate about properties we cannot understand. A computer does the same, but on a more limited scale. The computer thinks about data in the same way a human does, but it does not have unnecessary senses to clog its calculations and such.

Sentience - Artificial intelligence is growing every day. The odds of a robot gaining the ability of self perserverance is growing every day. After self perserverance, gaining sentience is only a step away.

Instinct - Again, our human bodies, no matter how complex we think it is, simply operate on a set dichotomy. This is what instinct is: parts of the dichotomy we do not yet understand. A computer has a fully understood dichotomy because we make it ourselves. That's the only difference.
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Postby The Hitman » 10 Feb 2007, 02:55

Dana wrote:I am a fan of beer-philosphy...particularly dark beer philosphy.


If you can see your hand through it, it's not beer.
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