[MD] Quantum computing

[Magnus Berg]

Ham

> I beg to disagree.  Artificial Intelligence is very much a part of the New
> Age movement, for all its "mumbo jumbo", and Kurzwell is structuring it
> around pseudo-scientific concepts, such as the premise that intellect
> equates to recorded knowledge and that there is no significant difference
> between AI and human cognizance.  This fallacious thinking is also evident
> in your essay, from which I cite the following excerpts:

Come on. There are lots and lots of very serious research going on in the AI 
area, and you dismiss it all just because you disagree with one's premises?


> This conclusion bears out what I said above.  You make the mistake of
> defining intelligence as the process of interactive growth and development

Not quite, that was (more or less) my definition of life, not intelligence.

> suggesting that if we can get machines to handle data "dynamically" (quantum
> computers?)they'll eventually replace, and presumably improve, the
> biologically-based human mind.  It's the same mistake that Kurzwell, and I'm
> afraid Pirsig also, has made in dismissing the phenomenon of proprietary
> awareness.

First of all, you need to understand what it means to handle data "dynamically". 
It's not just to handle data randomly and produce a slightly different result 
every time, it's to let DQ interfere. In quantum terms, it's to let quantum 
effects interfere, to let each calculation (or quality event) be led by quantum 
rules. To let an artificial machine be governed by the same quantum rules that 
governs nature itself, entanglement, non-locality, Bose-Einstein condensates 
etc., will let that machine tap into the same source of DQ that has governed 
evolution for eons, and that can't be bad.

But thanks for quoting my old essay, it was actually fun to re-read what I wrote 
almost 10 years ago now. I still stand by every word.

> You misread me.  I'm not advocating the prohibition of computer science.
> I'm all for it.  If modern computers can process information more
> efficiently in any field of human endeavor, by all means let's avail
> ourselves of this new tool.  But the fundamental questions of philosophy -- 
> ontology, metaphysics, epistemology, etc. -- concern man and his role in the
> cosmos, not machines or mechanical processes.  Am I alone in seeing the
> world as man's domain?  Is this ideology too egotistical for the Pirsigian
> society?  Must we reduce the individual to a complex bio-mechanical organism
> that evolved by accident from a "soup of goo" and needs cybernetic
> enhancement to function more perfectly?

I hope you're alone, at least in this group, in seeing the world as man's domain.

Can you, for example, tell me *when* man made this step from being just an 
organism to a being with awareness? You seem to make a very clear cut between 
man with awareness and everything else without it, right? So what triggered this 
grand step into awareness? Was it a boy sitting in a cave some 100.000 years ago 
who suddenly started to think, "who am I"?

> I don't know by what logic you assert that "all patterns are aware", but I
> don't buy that idea.  Nor do I accept the view that intellect is nothing but
> a series of inert patterns.  This is a serious flaw in Pirsig's reasoning.

Who said that "intellect" was a series of inert patterns? You need to make a 
distinction between "intellect" and "static intellectual patterns". The latter 
is just data, information.

> There is probably nothing more significant in existential experience than
> the individual human mind, and relegating it to a collective aesthetic is
> not my idea of intellectual progress.

I'm sure people must have mentioned this before, but isn't that Descartes "I 
think, therefore I am"?

> Are "nature programs" your source for zoological information?

Why do you ask? Do you mean they are less valid because I saw it on TV?

> Sure, animals
> can be trained to make certain sounds on command or mimic human behavior.
> No, I don't call this intellectual awareness.  You can't judge awareness by
> behavior.  I've seen no scientific evidence to support the view that animals
> "reason" or "have thoughts and questions."  They do not individually or
> collectively resolve to change these behavior patterns, nor do they build
> upon an intellectual data base.  Apart from human "conditioning" or
> domestication, animals behave according to the biological instincts
> genetically programmed into their species by nature.

Ok, I don't agree with you but that takes us back to my question above. What 
happened to the first "man" who transferred from being ruled by instinctive 
programming to awareness?

> As an anthropist, my definition of "intellectual awareness" is the innate
> capacity to evaluate and acquire knowledge and apply it to the physical,
> cultural, and intellectual advancement of the individual and his society.
> What sets Homo-sapiens apart from other species is a sense of value that
> encompasses moral and esthetic judgment, self-worth, compassion, creativity,
> social responsibility, spirituality, and the desire to know.  Man is not
> only "the measure(er) of all things"; he is the choicemaker of his world.
> Sadly, the MoQ neglects this truth.

The MoQ doesn't neglect it. It just doesn't attribute that much importance to 
it. Your "metaphysics" may be somewhat applicable to the earth and our society 
in our time, but travel backwards in time for more than a few hundred thousand 
years, or leave earth and it becomes pretty useless.

	Magnus