In reply to this comment by dgandhi:
>> ^shinyblurry:


You might realize that God is an idea deserving of serious philisophical consideration, a subject debated by some of the greatest minds this world has ever known. Is it the question in those circles. It would be laughable if you were to come to a real debate and say "well you don't have any evidence". And you do? Let's get real here..


Okay lets start this Poe/Turing test:

To give God serious philosophical consideration, the word itself must have meaning, so please, while not tipping your hand, explain how we could identify this thing if we were to come upon it. If you want to claim that we can't come upon it, then please explain your definition of the term exists in such a way that you can make the claim "God does exist".

i have been thoroughly impressed with your comments on this thread but this is nails the crux of any argument concerning theology/theosophy/sprituality:define god first THEN discuss.
otherwise it almost always and inevitably spirals into a dogmatic fistfight.

bravo my man.

>> ^shinyblurry:


You might realize that God is an idea deserving of serious philisophical consideration, a subject debated by some of the greatest minds this world has ever known. Is it the question in those circles. It would be laughable if you were to come to a real debate and say "well you don't have any evidence". And you do? Let's get real here..


Okay lets start this Poe/Turing test:

To give God serious philosophical consideration, the word itself must have meaning, so please, while not tipping your hand, explain how we could identify this thing if we were to come upon it. If you want to claim that we can't come upon it, then please explain your definition of the term exists in such a way that you can make the claim "God does exist".

I am turely lost for word about this. I think i would need to have seen more of the movie to really understand what the hell was going on.

That's a great idea! A similar thing happened in my elementary school for a mentally retarded kid. Their parents made a short documentary about what everyday life is like for him, how he perceives the world, and his helper dog and everything. All the kids in school watched it, and the teachers talked about it with the kids with a sincere attitude. People seemed to react in a considerate fashion instead of with hostility, and the kid made it through school just fine.

>> ^bareboards2:

Seems like there are two types of comments here -- ones that look at the moment on the video, and those that step back and put the video into a larger context and pontificate on the larger context.
And then there are arguments about who is right, when it isn't the same topic.
Bullying has always been a problem. No one has ever addressed it. How could we address it?
I read about a program in a UK school that tackled gay bullying, and it was pretty successful. The solution? Mandatory education on the contributions of gays to society. For example, they taught the kids about Alan Turing, the mathematical genius who was crucial to the Allied forces breaking the Nazi Enigma coding machine. Who was subsequently harassed and whose life was destroyed because he was gay.
That great post by the teacher shows change can happen if someone takes steps to make changes.
Humans have human responses. Casey did what Casey did.
What do we do now?

Seems like there are two types of comments here -- ones that look at the moment on the video, and those that step back and put the video into a larger context and pontificate on the larger context.

And then there are arguments about who is right, when it isn't the same topic.

Bullying has always been a problem. No one has ever addressed it. How could we address it?

I read about a program in a UK school that tackled gay bullying, and it was pretty successful. The solution? Mandatory education on the contributions of gays to society. For example, they taught the kids about Alan Turing, the mathematical genius who was crucial to the Allied forces breaking the Nazi Enigma coding machine. Who was subsequently harassed and whose life was destroyed because he was gay.

That great post by the teacher shows change can happen if someone takes steps to make changes.

Humans have human responses. Casey did what Casey did.

What do we do now?

Why are you showing Jared turing into a woman backwards?

"Instead he [Duchamp] ended up one of the 20th century's greatest art figures."

One of the 20th century's greatest figures? What was his enormous contribution to humankind and the marketplace of ideas? Invent the Turing Machine? Discover the structure of DNA?

Alright @enoch, I'll take up your challenge.

I have many questions that I would like answered, that nothing answers yet. I am not very interested in why I exist, because I don't think there is any particular meaning in that - I can read meaning in to my existence, sure, but there's no outside meaning to my existence or anything's existence. Some may view this as cynical, I see it as reasonable.

I am very interested in how. How does my brain work, how do I have a consciousness, how does my body influence my mind, and vice versa.

Why does regular physics break down at sub-atomic levels? Does this fact ripple up throughout the scales, so a quantum fluctuation affects my mood in the end?

Are dreams just random firings of neurons? Are they something else? We often see some sort of meaning in our dreams (and sometimes none at all), why is that? Do we make up the meaning as we go along, or do we project meaning into our dreams for ourselves to interpret? After all, if dreams are in fact created by ourselves, instead of just random, there must (or might) be some underlying meaning in it.

Our psyche is interesting, because our entire view of the world depends on it. A madman may see the world different than me, everyone may see the world different than me, why is that? Is it merely a physiological difference, is it something else? I don't know at this point.

Just because I am an atheist, a militant, rabid one at that, doesn't mean there is nothing that I believe. I believe a lot of things, that I have not had demonstrated. Many things just make sense to me, so I don't question them further. It's hard to list these things without being inane; stuff like gravity, physical laws, the properties of objects so on.

I have my own theories on more advanced stuff, which is completely open to ridicule, but they are things I believe based on my own observations and what I have seen from others more learned in the respected fields. Obviously, when I journey on to guesswork like this, I keep in mind that it might not be like this at all, but so far I think so.

An example: gwiz665's theory of consciousness.

The consciousness is an emergent property of our complex brain structure. It is a very mechanistic thing, which runs like software on our brain hardware. Obviously, I don't know much about our hardware, but this is a very interesting subject. I think that given enough computer power, we can simulate it in a turing machine, but I've grown uncertain as to how this can be accomplished. Hopefully neuroscience will get some insight into this, they're certainly working on it.

I think we can physically see our consciousness, but it's just really, really hard. We can theoretically see which programs run on a computer too, by looking at the electrical currents in the computer, but without knowing how exactly the computer interprets those data, we're pretty much in the dark. It's the same with the mind vs. brain.

I believe that our perception of our consciousness is different from what it actually is. We have very little privileged knowledge about our consciousness, because our brain, basically, makes it up as it goes along. I think there's significant ret-conning going on at all times as well, because our consciousness does not pick up all senses at all times, but our brain does - when something is important enough, it is written into our conscious narrative. How this weighing of importance happens is extremely important to me, how do we value things? We obviously have a way in our consciousness, where we associate meaning, value etc. to things, but what happens at a lower level? How is memory distributed in the brain, how is consciousness, how is deduction etc.

I basically make the assumption that the brain is a computer. A massively parallel computer, which processes a nearly infinite number of threads at once (~1 per neuron). How this is organized is beyond me, I black box it - it just makes sense at this point. It may be very wrong, but it seems to work and answer some questions.

I also assume that I'm right until something tells me otherwise - I think it's the only way to live. I can't doubt everything all the time.

You know why the lawyer is crying; because the judge doesn't give a shit. The whole tone of that court is bullshit.

Now I'm going to use ad homimen against the quoted person below. Do you dislike the constitution; your comment would seem to put you in that category. This case is clear cut, the Judicial Branch in Nevada does not have the power to call that law what it is; bullshit. The balance of powers is not working, and it is clear in the judge’s tone of voice; "I wash my hands of this."

Read the 8th amendment.

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Somehow I get the feeling that you would think the ultimatum imposed on Alan Turing was correct and immaculately moral. Read the following excerpt from Wikipedia. Turing’s ultimatum was chemical castration or imprisonment. Bear it in mind that this is the same era where Oppenheimer was persecuted for, what some would say, the same carelessness as Turing.

In January 1952 Turing picked up 19-year-old Arnold Murray outside a cinema in Manchester. After a lunch date, Turing invited Murray to spend the weekend with him at his house, an invitation which Murray accepted although he did not show up. The pair met again in Manchester the following Monday, when Murray agreed to accompany Turing to the latter's house. A few weeks later Murray visited Turing's house again, and apparently spent the night there.[38]

After Murray helped an accomplice to break into his house, Turing reported the crime to the police. During the investigation, Turing acknowledged a sexual relationship with Murray. Homosexual acts were illegal in the United Kingdom at that time,[6] and so both were charged with gross indecency under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, the same crime that Oscar Wilde had been convicted of more than fifty years earlier.[39]

Turing was given a choice between imprisonment and probation conditional on his agreement to undergo hormonal treatment designed to reduce libido. He accepted chemical castration via oestrogen hormone injections.[40] A side effect of the treatment caused him to grow breasts.

Turing's conviction led to the removal of his security clearance, and barred him from continuing with his cryptographic consultancy for GCHQ. At the time, there was acute public anxiety about spies and homosexual entrapment by Soviet agents,[41] because of the recent exposure of the first two members of the Cambridge Five, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, as KGB double agents. Turing was never accused of espionage but, as with all who had worked at Bletchley Park, was prevented from discussing his war work.[42]

Your way of thinking is outdated, outmaneuvered and better suited for the middle ages; also misogyny doesn't suit you.

>> ^fjules:

She got sentenced for life because she refused to have her name on the sex offenders list. Basically, it's her own fault.
"wtf with the crying lawyer?"
Good reason why women can't be lawyers.

this is not that far for even the 'western world'
it wasn't that long ago when gay people were forcibly castrated
alan turing was only officially apologised for this year - and that's for one of the most important people of the allied war effort
england overturned 'sodomy laws' in 1967, while some US states still had them in full effect until 2003

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Congrats on passing the Turing test NAR and thanks for your contributions to the Sift!

>> ^shole:
damn.. you should have told alan turing.. he got his suicide symbolism all wrong now


In Soviet Russia, cyanide apple eats YOU?

damn.. you should have told alan turing.. he got his suicide symbolism all wrong now

Oh man, you make a good argument here GSF, but some of your points are wonderfully put down by Daniel Dennett (my hero) in, hmm, I think it was Consciousness Explained. (I wrote an assignment on this a few years back, I'll just see if I can get the quotes and stuff..)

The Chinese Room thought experiment is essentially a dud. Dennett calls it an Intuition Pump.

“while philosophers and others have always found flaws in his thought experiment when it is considered as a logical argument, it is undeniable that its “conclusion” continues to seem “obvious” to many people. Why? Because people don’t actually imagine the case in the detail it requires.”

He argues that Searle's position may:

“(…) lull us into the (unwarranted) supposition that the giant program would work by somehow simply “matching up” the input Chinese characters with some output Chinese characters. No such program would work, of course”

For a program to work it would have to be:
“extraordinarily supple, sophisticated, and multilayered system, brimming with “world knowledge” and meta-knowledge and meta-meta-knowledge about its own responses, the likely responses of its interlocutor, its own “motivations” and the motivations of the interlocutor, and much, much more”

The point is, that Searle only looks at the man in the box, and not the whole box, which is what answers. While the little man may not have an understanding of the Chinese letters, the man + the reference book does have that understanding. Searle himself argues that this box would pass a Turing test, but that's the whole box, not just the little man inside.

You say

"Let us use another example. Let us say that we have broadcasting towers all over the USA. They are broadcasting all sorts of different programs to all sorts of different people. It is a complex web of towers and receivers but it all seems to work out ok. So, are we to conclude that radio towers are conscious? Of course not, but that is what are are doing with the human experience of consciousness. Lets look at that quickly.

When you experience something, you experience every one of your scenes simultaneously. You remember the sounds, the tastes, the sights...it is all there. However, your brain never really has a point in which all points connect. Your consciousness is something that seems to violate the laws of physics, that things are happening in different locations in space at different times, but for your consciousness, at the same time. This isn't something that is reducible to brain states, and not something that is physically possible in computer technology as we know it. It doesn't matter if it is parallel or not, if things don't touch but are somehow related this is mystifying; and as a result, unreproducible. Perhaps consciousnesses is reducible to one point in the brain we haven't found, but so far, there is no such thing."

And again, I want to refer to Dennett and his "Multiple Drafts theory", which I think is an excellent answer to this. I don't think that consciousness violates physics as such (obviously it doesn't, or it couldn't exist in our physical universe). I think that our consciousness is an amalgamation of sensory input that is processed in our brain and presented in our consciousness as "scenes". I mean, we have a much, much larger flow of sensory input than is presented to us, and our unconscious mind filters though this and presents what is perceived to be relevant inputs to "us" (our conscious minds). I think in the end it is actually reducible to brain states, in the same way that any give program, say firefox with videosift loaded, can be reduced to an electrical state at a given time in my computer.

On the concept on Blue and blueness, I think you are making a Qualia argument. To be honest, I can't remember all the details of that right now, but again Dennet's "Quining Qualia" in one of his books covers it greatly, if my memory serves.

I also love this subject.

Fair enough

In reply to this comment by gorillaman:
We are victims in the technical sense, and I do feel aggrieved. What actually happened to Turing is his personal tragedy, the crime was the law of the day, and affects even us since we could just as easily be living in 60s Britain as 00s wherever. While there are strategies he could have adopted for a safer and more comfortable life, there's nothing Turing could have done to avoid being victimised, and all the changed minds and apologies in the world aren't going to help him.

When Henry VIII officially criminalised buggery in 15-urmmurmurmurmur, and his law was supported by subsequent generations, they weren't just thinking of their people in their own time, they applied it to everyone - you, me, Alan Turing and a child born a billion years from now in Alpha Centauri. This is the problem with taking the long view; the future may be bright, but it can't shine back on us, while the shadow of the past stretches forward forever.

Meh. I'm still closer to childhood than middle-age, and enamoured of idealism.

As for our limited intelligence - you do the best you can with what you have, and I'd suggest we're doing a hell of a lot better than some.

In reply to this comment by chilaxe:
Yeah, the 'personhood' model and the cognitive machine model are each useful levels of detail for the same thing... the best one to use probably depends on what your application is.

I don't blame people, though, for holding views that I think have big costs for society... I think we're all in the same trap of limited human intelligence - them more so than us - and people will change their minds in the end.

Also, the libertarian in me says that society's lack of intelligence only has a cost on us if we let it (to some degree). Turing, for example, as much as I personally admire him for his genius, chose to take certain risks, and he lost the bet.

...

IMHO, it's reasonable to say a rationalist in his position wouldn't have been so careless with sexuality. I think we're often more empowered and capable of proactive behavior than we think we are, and viewing ourselves as victims is generally not necessary.