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Post by BlueDolphin on Jul 4, 2006 22:55:20 GMT -5
Although I could ask the common "fate v. free will" discussion question, I have something else. In the Human Rights thread, we all came to the conclusion that robots do not have free will and hence cannot feel emotions. But I have a question built on that one. Why isn't it possible for anything non-biological to have free will? Is free will some sort of entity that is only attracted to things made of organic compounds? If we believe that nothing artificial can have free will, we must also think that we ourselves cannot have free will since we are just very complicated constructs if you think about it. This is not about saying robots have free will. This is more about asking whether we as humans have it or not.
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Post by Blues on Jul 4, 2006 23:22:23 GMT -5
I beleive free will can manifest in a machine. however, the machine would have to imitate our organic brains in order for this to be possible. once our Nanotech reaches a higher level of sophicisity, I beleve we can achieve it.
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Post by Arachis on Jul 5, 2006 15:00:53 GMT -5
Jeff... We never said that robots could never achieve free will. All I said is that as soon as a robot has free will it becomes a clone/ test tube human, not a robot.
But sort of seperately, human "free will" could actually be nothing more than a predictable (or if its random enough, unpredictable) pattern of chemical movement in the brain and therefore be an illusion anyway. If you had the choice to have vanilla ice cream or chocolate ice cream, is it really a choice? or did your brain pick one simply because it was hot out, so the sweeter chocolate was more available. If you try and choose the vanilla instead, thats just because you recently read this paragraph and therefore it influenced you to change your mind.
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Post by Evilduck on Jul 5, 2006 16:54:34 GMT -5
Humans and computers think very differently. Computers focus on one logical task and do it very quickly. Humans process information in many different ways simultaneously (some of them redundant). A great example of this is the different techniques used by humans and computers to solve Sudoku puzzles. A computer will essentially go through, square by square, and test all the possible numbers to see if they can work in each square. This would take a long time for a human to do. Humans use other methods, wich look at large segments of the puzzle at the same time. For example a human could block off two rows that contain a certain number to determine whether that number can only appear in one place in the third row. So I guess the question is can something have free will if it uses the computer's method of analyzing data. My guess is that it cannot simply because that method is very linear.
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Post by Arachis on Jul 5, 2006 17:40:33 GMT -5
the computer wont necessarily go through square by square and test every possible number unless you program it to do it that way. If you research algorithms you will probably find more efficient ways for a computer to solve sudoku puzzles that use much less memory because they are faster.
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Post by Monolith on Jul 5, 2006 23:47:51 GMT -5
If you ask me, there's no way to know the truth unless we succeed in creating a robot with an artificial nervous system on par with that of organic creatures. Right now, we barely understand our own brains, nor can we do much to recreate them, so I don't see that happening soon. If we really did understand them, we could probably repair damaged brains and perhaps even revive organic creatures.
In any case, a computer and a human brain work pretty differently, if we tried to create a self-concious system as a computer program it would probably vary quite far from a human conciousness. we could synthesize similar results, but the foundation would be different because computer chips and grey matter do not work in exactly the same way (though they are remotely similar).
I'd also verture to guess that some of those with a more religious outlook would believe creating artificial life to be impossible, since there is no 'soul' to speak of. (Of course, this would prompt one to ask how a person created through artificial means would differ from one created through natural means, as both come about through human action, which in turn would prompt one to question how a soul comes into existence.)
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Post by Blues on Jul 5, 2006 23:57:53 GMT -5
I would suggest reading Mark W.Tiedemann.
he brings up a lot of good questions in is Asimov novels
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Post by Evilduck on Jul 6, 2006 1:24:12 GMT -5
No Ali. I've read scientific articles on the differences in how humans and programs solve Sudoku and how they think differently in general. The method I mentioned (going square by square) just happened to be the only one I could remember for computers, there are of course more efficient ones but they are still radically different from humans because humans mostly use the visual setup of the puzzle and computers process abstract data.
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Post by Arachis on Jul 6, 2006 13:56:05 GMT -5
While that may be true, you could program a computer to solve a sudoku puzzle in the same way a human does. It may not be the most efficient way, but often times it helps to find the most efficient algorithm.
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Post by bezzerkker on Jul 12, 2006 2:29:32 GMT -5
Free Willy was a horribly boring movie...
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Post by Evilduck on Jul 13, 2006 1:13:35 GMT -5
At least it spawned a humorous Simpsons joke.
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Post by BlueDolphin on Jul 13, 2006 19:57:22 GMT -5
Jeff... We never said that robots could never achieve free will. All I said is that as soon as a robot has free will it becomes a clone/ test tube human, not a robot. That is actually what I agree with, but I misunderstood what you were trying to say. ok, so how can you emulate the human brain without free will? thats like trying to create a fruit without seeds (seeds being a defining factor in classifying something as a fruit). I dont know if you can emulate the human brain without emotions and free will. The problem with our current model for computing is that there is no way for hormones and "emotions" to conflict with the computer (one of the reasons a computer can never have free will as well). Without the emotions how do you expect a computer to learn like us or even function like us? I think sentience is judged by output only. Where it came from should be irrelevent whether artificial or not. I know many people might disagree though.
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Post by Evilduck on Jul 14, 2006 0:49:10 GMT -5
Would you say animals are sentient?
What about dolphins?
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Post by BlueDolphin on Jul 16, 2006 14:44:02 GMT -5
Some might be closer to sentience than others. Dolphins seem to be near sentient. They can't build a civilization because of their body forms though
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Post by Little Miss Odd on Jul 16, 2006 18:20:05 GMT -5
Are we questioning sentience or free will? In my opinion, sentience is the ability to acknowledge unknowns and possibilities(which takes a hell of a lot of work in simple functions), and free will is using that information to make a choice.
And now, Applied Linear Regression flashbacks. Most computational devices currently can't take any more variables than they are given. A statistics classroom can, after about five minutes, give you a whole lot of reasons as to why the output isn't linear, and what we can do to make it more so, and will make the necessary modifications to the data. Even if the software thinks one modification is more useful than the other numerically, it's the classroom that questions why that is, when using human logic, it should say something different, that doesn't make as much sense to the ones and zeroes. You can compare the human mind to an extremely advanced computer, but the human mind sometimes chooses answers that are 'inferior' to others, or that don't always make sense, from an unbias standpoint.
The thing is with math, we prefer it when there's only one answer, any answers that are 'inferior' are discounted completely(like when you play with quadratic formulae), or one equation with the same variables in one device MUST be the equal to the same equation on another device. Human minds aren't synced like that. Of course this mini-premise pretends events are equations, so maybe it doesn't work for real people.
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