Turing, Intelligence And Sentiece

[CraigD]

Welcome to hypography, Pincho! :)

Currently PC's do not propagate energy in the correct dimensions required for sentience. But one day they could use other forms of energy distribution, and become sentient.

This view, which I think you state pretty understandably, puts you in the same kind of camp Penrose described in his 1989 The Emperor’s New Mind (a must-read for serious AI students, I think): that “sentience” or “consciousness” can’t be emulated using a Turing-complete computer. The opposite view – that it can – is conventionally termed strong AI, though this term is often used more broadly to describe Turing-complete computers that pass a test like the Turing test, yet fail more thorough “sentience tests”.

 

You seem to differ in the details – Penrose speculates that “consciousness is the result of quantum gravity effects in microtubules” (small protein structures) in nerve cells, while you say

The energy distribution required is an 8D grid X/Y/Z/In/Out/-X/-Y/-Z. In/Out are scalar dimensions of time. The scalar dimensions are the centre of Atomic Nucleus, and the centre of electrons.

Unlike Penrose’s excellent writing, I don’t understand your, Pincho. You’d do well, I think, to follow Penrose’s example, and write, if not a famous book, at least a well-edited paper, explaining your ideas.

 

Like Penrose and others in his camp (sometimes termed “new mysterians”, though this is somewhat misleading, as mysterianism usually implies not only the belief that we don’t understand in principle how consciousness works, but that we can’t), you seem to believe that new physics theories are needed to explain consciousness – though, as I mention above, I really don’t understand your position, so am having to guess to fill in gaps in my understanding.

 

the real question is not whether machines think, but whether men do.

Well put :thumbs_up – though, as a common definition of “think” is “that thing that we Homo Sapiens do, one can argue that we do, by definition, think. Even our species name can be loosely translated as “man the thinker”.

 

I prefer a variation of this question: “Is ‘consiousness’ (or ‘sentience’) a semantic null?” It helps to understand this question to be already acquaintance with the idea of a semantic null, such as Chompsky’s “colorless green ideas sleep furiously”, though it’s not a hard concept: a semantic null is a term that refers to something that doesn’t actually exist. Just because we have a word for it, and assume attributes for it such as that it’s deeply mysterious, doesn’t mean it does, or is.

 

computers are capable of being programmed to write thier own programs, design their own components, adapt to changing situations, learn, remember, etc. so in what respect are they not intellegent?

The fictional HAL from 2001 could do this. No present day computer of my acquaintance can, other than in very limited ways, such as via genetic algorithm programs.

 

computers have thier own language.

Computer languages are not like natural languages. They weren’t invented by computers to allow computers to communicate with one another, as natural languages were by people. Computer languages were invented by people to make it easier to program computers.

 

so at what point do you suggest we attribute sentience to a computer?

when it becomes self aware? how do you test for such a thing?

One way is the title of this thread: the Turing test. Have the computer carry on a conversation with a human, via a medium that hides its lack of having a human body. If it’s accepted as a fellow human as often other human are, it passes.

 

The real essence of the Turing test, IMHO, is the implication that any computer that can pass it must be self-aware (AKA sentient or conscious). Restated, that without whatever being self-aware is, not being it guarantees a computer won’t pass the Turing test.

 

Modern computers are just fast adding-up machines.

I think this badly mischaracterizes a Turing-complete computer.

 

An adding machine – a mechanical, electro-mechanical, or electronic machine that takes 2 numbers entered into it and displays their sum, either in a way doable and seeable by a human, or a way doable and “seeable” only by another machine – is not Turing-complete.

 

To be Turing-complete, a machine must be able, in short, to determine what it will do next based on what it did before. More technically, it must be statefull. It must be able to execute general programs.

 

A Univeral Turing machine is Turing-complete. A UTM need not be electronic, or fast. You could make one using gears and rods and powered by donkeys turning a crank. Any program that can run on any other Turing-complete computer can be made to run on any UTM, including a donkey-powered one made with gears and rods. If any computer can pass the Turing test, this donkey-powered one can – though “a medium that hides its lack of having a human body” will likely be much more difficult to make, as a donkey-powered UTM will likely be very slow compared to a present-day electronic computer, so the “conversation” would have to be something like exchanging tweet-sized messages once every few years.

 

Suppose we use relays to make an electro-mechanical computer. It contains solenoids, metal slugs and wire coils.

 

Would you say these metal slugs and coiled wires are sentient? Obviously not - so why attribute sentience to transistors?

I think Pincho and Phillip already answered this well.

[Pincho Paxton]

You seem to differ in the details – Penrose speculates that “consciousness is the result of quantum gravity effects in microtubules” (small protein structures) in nerve cells, while you say

 

Pincho...

The energy distribution required is an 8D grid X/Y/Z/In/Out/-X/-Y/-Z. In/Out are scalar dimensions of time. The scalar dimensions are the centre of Atomic Nucleus, and the centre of electrons.

 

Unlike Penrose’s excellent writing, I don’t understand your, Pincho. You’d do well, I think, to follow Penrose’s example, and write, if not a famous book, at least a well-edited paper, explaining your ideas.

 

My explanation is similar to the history of Anti-Matter...

 

The idea of negative matter has appeared in past theories of matter, theories which have now been abandoned. Using the once popular vortex theory of gravity, the possibility of matter with negative gravity was discussed by William Hicks in the 1880s. Between the 1880s and the 1890s, Karl Pearson proposed the existence of "squirts" (sources) and sinks of the flow of aether. The squirts represented normal matter and the sinks represented negative matter, a term which Pearson is credited with coining.[citation needed] Pearson's theory required a fourth dimension for the aether to flow from and into.

 

But I use spacetime, and 8 dimensions instead of 4. The 8 dimensions are the same 4 dimensions but including Newton's Third Law that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. So I give the 4D their opposites as another -4D