"These experiments have demonstrated how remarkably easy it is to ‘move’ a human centre of awareness from one body to another," they write. "This speaks directly to the classical question of the relationship between human consciousness and the body, which has been discussed by philosophers, psychologists, and theologians for centuries."

I'm not sure where you get the notion that somehow consciousness is "passed on" to people. What do you mean, passed on? For that matter, what do you mean by "conscious"? We throw that word around a lot, but what does it actually mean?

People forget they are dual in nature. That's why people have a hard time seeing what the op is saying.

You are two people, who were 4 people who were 8 people and so on....what do you think consciousness is?

Originally posted by oozyism
reply to post by letthereaderunderstand

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People forget they are dual in nature. That's why people have a hard time seeing what the op is saying.

You are two people, who were 4 people who were 8 people and so on....what do you think consciousness is?

Thank you my friend for the better explanation. Language is a barrier to communication.

Thanks for your insightful input

Ooz

Originally posted by tinfoilman
reply to post by letthereaderunderstand

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But there are differences. For one, we know we're doing it. As far as we can tell, but the computer does not know what it is doing. To answer why we need to first find out what it means to "know something".

Also, the more a human learns the better and more experienced they get. The faster they get. The more skilled they get.

I agree, but a computer knows what it is doing as well within a set criteria. Once you've programmed a computer to handle something, a computer doesn't need to improve as it will go to the max of it's skill immediately cutting out the need to get "more skilled", but that is available as well....upgrade

However, the more a computer is taught the slower it gets because now it has more instructions to process.

Actually a computer will only slow down if you are giving it simultaneous commands running different programs at the same time. Same with humans. Some are good at multitasking, and some (ME) are not.

Another issue is once you teach a human something you've instantly taught it something else. Teach a human to throw a ball and they can instantly throw anything. A rock, a dish, another human being across the room if they back talk lol.

But that is not true. I can throw a baseball with pretty good accuracy, but I can't throw a football to save my life. There are variables just like with a computer, only a computer is going to be accurate every time...I won't be. If you teach the computer the nuances of the different objects it will learn and perform at 100% every time baring decay of parts....no different then humans except humans will not function at 100%.

For a computer you have to teach it how to throw each of these things separately. It can't figure out that all these things can be treated the same where humans seem to instantly already get this without wasting anymore processing power or time.

Does a football player, being an athlete, know how to dance like a ballerina just because he is athletic? We see and we mimic. No different then a computer only a football player is not going to dance like a ballerina the first try or the second...but I see where you are coming from.

Where as if we taught a computer how to do this, all of a sudden everything it did would grind to a halt trying to figure out all the other stuff that could be thrown too. It seems humans learn the concept, where robots only learn the task.

So if I gave you 10000 different locations at one time and told you to throw the ball to the correct one you would without having some input as to which one was right? You would need some cue or clue as to which location was the correct one. After that you would need to sort through 10000 different locations....You wouldn't freeze up?

To a human it just seems obvious and they can infer without ever throwing the dish how to throw one based on how they threw the ball where the computer either has to actually do it, or be instructed by a human that it is possible.

I was instructed how to throw a baseball correctly by my father. He programmed my mind with images showing me the proper grip and way to throw over my arm. This isn't programming?

I always come across this concept when I play a Zelda game BTW. I can hit the enemy with my sword so therefore I automatically assume I should be able to bash the NPC characters in the village with my sword too (especially Tingle), but guess what? Doesn't work. The computer does not get that these two things could be treated the same if it wanted to do so.

So, let's say someone is colorblind, not having received the proper pigment in their cornia to gather Green light. Every time they are sitting at the light, they don't know that the signal is green and instead watch for different cues. This doesn't mean they can't see. They just can't see green having not been programmed Genetically for recognizing it.

Everything is cause and effect.

Where in real life, if I can bash a chicken upside the head with my sword to make it go away, so it stands to reason I can also bash a dog in the head or even myself in the head without ever doing so and without ever being told. How does the brain infer where the computer has to be told exactly what it can and cannot do?

Do you mean "I can think something without doing it?" Sorry Not sure

Also, humans can always make good guesses at solutions to problems that computers either find truly non-computable (and there are such problems) or at least hard to compute regardless of the processing power thrown at the problem.

Yes but a guess can be wrong. Besides you only make a "good" guess when you are somewhat educated. You are still pulling from input knowledge, if even tactile, variables will always change your "guess" as you are making a guess derived by which question is given. You don't just blurt out answers to things when know one has "input" a question/query, unless you have Tourettes. I know you don't.

Like is this email spam? A computer can turn and crack all day and never know for sure if it's spam or not no matter how much information or processing time you give it. Only the probability. This is why most spam filters suck, except maybe for GMail's because they use black magic or something.

Gmail doesn't use blackmagic...I think? No actually, Gmail has a Google of information to use as it's background for choosing what is spam and what is not. Just like a doctor is suited for surgery as opposed to a mechanic. Gmail having it's bigger then God database to choose from is going to be better at selecting what is spam as opposed to a fresh installed email client. At least you know your address book won't spam you....

A human being however can look right at it though and not even read the whole email or even have to open it and be like, oh yeah, that's spam. But when we try to program a computer to do that it always fails one way or another.

I promise the way you delete spam and the way the computer does is the same. If you receive spam with your full name in the "to" box and an ambiguous "subject" you might open it, but your computer might to...again input is what is determining not "output".

Then there's another problem. When we do program a computer to solve a problem like a human does, it brings even the biggest super computer to a grinding halt when we try to make a computer solve the problem the same way humans solve the problem, or at least how we think we solve the problem.

Do you have an example of this?

I think what you are trying to get at is "Will" as opposed to "Purpose".

If that is so, let me ask you one question.

Did you choose to be alive? I am being serious. Did you "will" your existence? Has one living creature "willed" it's way into existence?

If we can answer that question, we will know if computers have a conscience.

Thanks for your questions. You've got me thinking....and that is dangerous...lol

Peace

Originally posted by tinfoilman
reply to post by letthereaderunderstand

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No this has nothing to do with will. First, let me say that as a programmer some of your intuitions would seem to make perfect sense at first, but to someone that's done things, like coded email filters before, they actually don't work like you or even I would think at first glance until you get down to coding them.

For example, I can tell you for a fact that an email filter does not pick out spam the same way a human does because we don't know how humans do it. Therefore, since we don't know, we cannot teach a computer how to do it that way.

This makes no sense. How can you say humans don't know how they do it (pick out spam)? I know how I do it. I first determine who is sending me the email. If it is an address I am not familiar with that is a cue to my mind that this email is more then likely spam. Second, I determine who the email is being send to. If I see a bulk list of more email addresses that I'm not familiar with, that is a second cue. Also, I review the subject line...basically it all comes down to wither or not I am familiar with the incoming email's sender. Much like telling a child not to talk to strangers. Obviously those in my address book, I don't question, unless by chance I know of a virus going around, only then will I proceed with caution.

Perhaps I am misunderstanding you. Do you mean the actual neural process that the brain uses to do the task or the variables involved with such a task?

Also, even Gmail's spam filter is not as perfect as a human being, but it's just better than the other filters. Which brings up a question? They obviously have more access to information than I do, yet it still does a worse job at picking out the spam than I. Just better than the other services. Something to consider.

Wouldn't you agree that with time, the filter becomes better? New emails come just like new faces come. I don't know every new face I see, thus act in a manner that is more conserved around new faces. At first a spam filter might flag everything as spam, no different then a child would run up to strangers before being told "don't talk to strangers"...(Dio reference...lol) Forgive me, I admit that I only have a minuscule knowledge in programming and am only making conjectures. In this you can educate me and I am greatly appreciative.

Also, not every email filter works the same way a human does because not every email filter works the same. Depends on the email filter. Even if one did work the way humans work, not all of them would.

Like I said, when it comes to guesses or non-computable problems, yes a human can be wrong, but so also will the computer because when presented with these types of problems it does not matter how much processing power or information you throw at it. Even if you throw more processing power and information at it than a human has, the computer can still only do as well as the human. But this only applies to a certain class of problems.

In other words, even when the computer has more information available than the human, it can still never solve the problem any better than a human in certain situations. Even if it takes the same amount of time to solve as a human, double the power, and it still takes the same amount of time. This means there's something more complicated going on in the brain other than pure horsepower.

I totally agree with you, but wonder what would you term as a "non-computable" problem. Something such as picking an ice-cream flavor? Even that is still a problem as everything comes down to 0 or 1. I might have 31 flavors to choose from, but in the end the final selection, regardless of the amount of choices given will be yes or no. Binary across the board.

Computers are speedy and accurate true, but learning how to throw something accurately and learning how to throw are two different things.

Computers have accuracy. However, in contrast, try to make a computer not be accurate and see how different it is from a human. I can easily throw badly. A computer can not. Once taught to throw accurately it cannot throw badly no matter how hard it tries. You may actually have to add a couple hundred or even a thousand instructions to the code to make it throw badly. But the human gets this ability for free. Where does the free work come from? Well, programmers nor people that study the brain simply don't know yet. We wish we did. I would tell you lol.

Unless it is also taught to throw a ball without accuracy as well, and under a specific criteria or situational guise programmed to make the best selection for the situation.

It would be question as to why one would choose to throw the ball "badly" in the first place and surely there is a reason. So then, if reason exists then a computer can be given the same reasons as to why it would want to throw the ball without accuracy. I do understand what you are getting at, but I see that you are only considering the strait away programming. If we were to include the programming to throw badly as well as the programming to throw correctly along with each options set of circumstance for such a throw, how then is the computer different, short of "feelings".

Imagine how long our brains have been solving problems for. Quite the contrast of the mere 30 years that computers have been in the public eye. A guy I used to work with used to program with punch cards when computers ran off of vacuum tubes. Imagine where computers will be in 50 years or 100 years, let alone the untold time of human advancement.

Look at the start of life for a human. One cell carries the entire blueprint for the whole human. Computers are still in the first cell of existence.

But the accuracy will trick you into think the computer is smarter. Don't be deceived. Tell the computer to not throw accurately on purpse next time and see what you get.

Also, one might assume that the reason the human mind improves is because it is not optimized well when it first learns something, where as the computer will start out at top speed and only get slower.

However, we like to think that because computers are faster than humans they have more processing power, but you would be deceiving yourself.

Faster at what? Well that depends and that's the trick. Adding two numbers together? Sure. Computers can add much faster than I can.

But what about facial recognition? Actually humans are either much much faster at that or much more accurate depending on which algorithm you pick for the computer. So which one has more processing power? Well, you can't actually tell can you? lol.

Have you ever studied how well witnesses do at remembering items at a crime scene or how impressionable they are? It is very interesting to say the least and after finding out the success rate of witnesses I hope to God I never am put in such a situation. Accuracy is not even 50%.

The only reason the computer seems to keep up is because with facial recognition is because the programmer sometimes will take shortcuts making it less accurate. But either way the computer has to make the trade off. A human does not seem to have to do this.

But there's a paradox here and here's where we really see the difference between humans and computers. A computer may be faster than a human at adding numbers, but with a computer no matter how fast it runs the more complex tasks will ALWAYS, no matter what kind of computer you use, ALWAYS run slower than the less complex task like simply adding two numbers.

Since you must add and subtract numbers to do pattern recognition then doing pattern recognition will always be slower than simply adding two numbers together. Because when doing the pattern recognition you not only have to add or subtract numbers together, you also have to analyse the result which will always take more time than just the adding. On a computer you can never add 20 numbers together faster than you can add two numbers together. Anytime you add more work you're going to run slower.

With a human this is backwards. Some of my friends will be stumped on a simple multiplication problem like multiplying two digit numbers together and they'll have to think about it for a minute or even get out a calculator which means not only do they do it slowly, they can't do it at all sometimes.

True, but not all humans have a problem with math, just like not all computers are programmed to do spreed sheets.

But when they see my face they instantly know who I am. This is impossible for a computer. A computer can never recognize a face faster than it can multiply or add numbers together because it must multiply and add numbers together to recognize the face.

But a human can recognize its father and mother's face before it even learns how to add and subtract.

They instantly know who you are because they know you. A baby knows it's mother and father by way of pattern recognition from the womb, first auditory then visual as you know babies eyes are not that good seeing shapes and colors rather then lines and features.

With our current knowledge it is impossible to build a computer that can do this. A neural net would be the closest thing, but you'd probably still fail there. Go ahead, try it. Try to build a pattern recognition algorithm that still works without adding, subtracting, dividing, or multiplying numbers together. Can't do it.

My friend, we'd be gazillionaires if we could do that....lol Let's get to work

Seriously though, I'm not saying that a computer is conscious. Until one turns itself on and begins doing things I have not input, i don't believe they will be, but as for the op, does it take on the consciousness of the host, I'd have to say yes, but only in operation...

Peace

Originally posted by tinfoilman
reply to post by letthereaderunderstand

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Anyway I was starting to run out of room, but I had this to add.

What we can't figure out is how the computer calculates different from the brain. On a computer if it takes 1 second to do one operation it'll most likely take 20 seconds to do 20 operations.

In the human brain this is not the case. Sometimes it'll take 10 seconds, or an hour, or sometimes less time than if it did just one operation that only took a second. Other things it does just like a computer and is totally deterministic.

But it keeps us wondering why. What method does the brain use to calculate its results that you get such whacky numbers? Well, I don't know, but it's some sort of weird math they didn't teach us in school I'll tell you that. But I do believe it's just math and nothing spooky like God is telling us the answer.

Also, I cannot answer to you if a computer is already conscious because I do not know what a conscious is. More importantly I cannot explain to the computer what conscious is and therefore I cannot tell it to tell me if it is conscious or not.

Because it would be like saying, are you conscious (something I don't understand). And the computer would basically say, how would I know if I am? You haven't told me what conscious is?

So, see the problem there?

[edit on 18-10-2009 by tinfoilman]

[edit on 18-10-2009 by tinfoilman]