PhilosophyWIMB: How omnipotent is your deity?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ash

I'm grateful to Monty now for bringing AI into this thread because we are now comparing three types of intelligence. One of which is real, empirically experienced by all, measurable in some ways, and with the whole of history to analyse it's outputs for good and ill.

The other two are both hypothetical, and at opposite extremes in different directions from the one real intelligence we know. One might one day come into being as something other than a conjuring trick (which contemporary AI is), the other has apparently always been there and is what we project a fantasy extrapolation of ourselves onto, bestowing it with any and all super-human powers we can imagine.

It is not lack of imagination or an excess of arrogance that drives my position, but a lack of evidence. (We could speculate about alien or animal intelligence too but ultimately to no end)

---

I don't really understand why you consider human intelligence real and AI hypothetical. They are both merely data processing systems at different stages of their evolution :shrug:

Do you think AI has the potential to develop consciousness?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ash

I'm grateful to Monty now for bringing AI into this thread because we are now comparing three types of intelligence. One of which is real, empirically experienced by all, measurable in some ways, and with the whole of history to analyse it's outputs for good and ill.

The other two are both hypothetical, and at opposite extremes in different directions from the one real intelligence we know. One might one day come into being as something other than a conjuring trick (which contemporary AI is), the other has apparently always been there and is what we project a fantasy extrapolation of ourselves onto, bestowing it with any and all super-human powers we can imagine.

It is not lack of imagination or an excess of arrogance that drives my position, but a lack of evidence. (We could speculate about alien or animal intelligence too but ultimately to no end)

---

To which - like any good Jesuit - I would respond thus: what ‘evidence’ does the woodlouse have for the existence of a vastly superior human intelligence? The answer: none that it is capable of acknowledging, appreciating or comprehending. Would you bother trying to explain yourself to a woodlouse, a? Of course not. No more than God would bother trying to explain himself to you.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Burney

To which - like any good Jesuit - I would respond thus: what ‘evidence’ does the woodlouse have for the existence of a vastly superior human intelligence? The answer: none that it is capable of acknowledging, appreciating or comprehending. Would you bother trying to explain yourself to a woodlouse, a? Of course not. No more than God would bother trying to explain himself to you.

---

Yeah, apart from the fact that god is continuously trying to get in our faces and demand that we worship him, only each time he has a different name, different number of arms, or gods even, and a different set of rules to follow. Many of us have found that this detracts from the credibility of his message.

And the woodlouse almost certainly doesn't conceptualise 'evidence' of any kind, let alone of a vastly superior intelligence. So it's just whataboutery really. The Jesuits should stick to creating sinister secret societies to enslave us all. They do that better than logic imo.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ash

Yeah, apart from the fact that god is continuously trying to get in our faces and demand that we worship him, only each time he has a different name, different number of arms, or gods even, and a different set of rules to follow. Many of us have found that this detracts from the credibility of his message.

And the woodlouse almost certainly doesn't conceptualise 'evidence' of any kind, let alone of a vastly superior intelligence. So it's just whataboutery really. The Jesuits should stick to creating sinister secret societies to enslave us all. They do that better than logic imo.

---

There is only one God, a. All the others are imposters.

Yes. His name is Allah and Mohamed is his prophet...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ash

Yeah, apart from the fact that god is continuously trying to get in our faces and demand that we worship him, only each time he has a different name, different number of arms, or gods even, and a different set of rules to follow. Many of us have found that this detracts from the credibility of his message.

And the woodlouse almost certainly doesn't conceptualise 'evidence' of any kind, let alone of a vastly superior intelligence. So it's just whataboutery really. The Jesuits should stick to creating sinister secret societies to enslave us all. They do that better than logic imo.

---

The AI of the future may very well see our own "conceptualisation" skills in not much of a different way to how we view those of woodlouse.

The crucial point is that to be a woodlouse is like *something*. Its capacity to conceptualise or reason is neither here nor there.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Monty92

I don't really understand why you consider human intelligence real and AI hypothetical. They are both merely data processing systems at different stages of their evolution :shrug:

Do you think AI has the potential to develop consciousness?

---

Is an artificial leg a real leg? Only by a generous and very open definition of the word 'leg'. Maybe one day we'll build a leg that is identical to a real one.

We'd have to understand how our own consciousness works first before having a serious crack at that question. It's perhaps the best argument for some kind of metaphysics, or not if the conscious is just a combination of biochemistry and information processing. The human mind is amazing. The other night I dreamed I bought a battleship to live in. WTF?

I used to wonder at all these AI questions 30 years ago when I was dabbling with 'Expert Systems' and trying to write software that connected entities and attributes and sorted and processed them in exciting ways. Then I lost interest, which explains my cold scepticism perhaps. I regret that sometimes. At other times I don't, as I might have now been working for Google, Amazon, Facebook or some such bunch of evil shÃ*tcùnts.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Monty92

The AI of the future may very well see our own "conceptualisation" skills in not much of a different way to how we view those of woodlouse.

The crucial point is that to be a woodlouse is like *something*. Its capacity to conceptualise or reason is neither here nor there.

---

Jesus wept. It isn't much of an AI if it can't distinguish between a (relatively) advanced civilisation with knowledge and culture and space travel and video games, and a fùcking woodlouse, which goes around eating wood. You are just being obtuse now to pretend we are having an actual conversation rather than you just winding me up.

If we created an AI, wouldn't that make us some kind of GOD for the AI?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ash

Yeah, apart from the fact that god is continuously trying to get in our faces and demand that we worship him, only each time he has a different name, different number of arms, or gods even, and a different set of rules to follow. Many of us have found that this detracts from the credibility of his message.

And the woodlouse almost certainly doesn't conceptualise 'evidence' of any kind, let alone of a vastly superior intelligence. So it's just whataboutery really. The Jesuits should stick to creating sinister secret societies to enslave us all. They do that better than logic imo.

---

The woodlouse is as capable of conceptualising ‘evidence’ relating to us as we are of conceptualising evidence relating to a God, a. That’s the point: God laughs at our pathetic attempts to understand Him.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ash

Is an artificial leg a real leg? Only by a generous and very open definition of the word 'leg'. Maybe one day we'll build a leg that is identical to a real one.

We'd have to understand how our own consciousness works first before having a serious crack at that question. It's perhaps the best argument for some kind of metaphysics, or not if the conscious is just a combination of biochemistry and information processing. The human mind is amazing. The other night I dreamed I bought a battleship to live in. WTF?

I used to wonder at all these AI questions 30 years ago when I was dabbling with 'Expert Systems' and trying to write software that connected entities and attributes and sorted and processed them in exciting ways. Then I lost interest, which explains my cold scepticism perhaps. I regret that sometimes. At other times I don't, as I might have now been working for Google, Amazon, Facebook or some such bunch of evil shÃ*tcùnts.

---

Would a leg created out of human cells be a real leg?

You're talking like a dualist, which is basically a position of religiosity, yet you've spent much of this thread deriding religion.

Materialism dictates that consciousness originates in the mind. The mind is merely a data processing system. Ergo, AI is of course capable of developing consciousness.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ash

Jesus wept. It isn't much of an AI if it can't distinguish between a (relatively) advanced civilisation with knowledge and culture and space travel and video games, and a fùcking woodlouse, which goes around eating wood. You are just being obtuse now to pretend we are having an actual conversation rather than you just winding me up.

If we created an AI, wouldn't that make us some kind of GOD for the AI?

---

Do woodlice actually eat wood, a? One knows so little of the degustatory preferences of the lower insecta. It's rather appalling, actually.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ash

Jesus wept. It isn't much of an AI if it can't distinguish between a (relatively) advanced civilisation with knowledge and culture and space travel and video games, and a fùcking woodlouse, which goes around eating wood. You are just being obtuse now to pretend we are having an actual conversation rather than you just winding me up.

If we created an AI, wouldn't that make us some kind of GOD for the AI?

---

I dealt with this last point earlier. If dogs had created humans, we'd have even more reason to slavishly devote ourselves to their well-being. But if there was a point at which they became an existential threat to us, we'd cease giving one single fúck about them and kill them all instantly.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sir C

Do woodlice actually eat wood, a? One knows so little of the degustatory preferences of the lower insecta. It's rather appalling, actually.

---

Not insects. Crustaceans

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Burney

Not insects. Crustaceans

---

Even worse. One can't imagine a prawn or a lobster tucking into a lump of 4 by 2, but on the other hand, what can one imagine a prawn snacking on?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Monty92

Would a leg created out of human cells be a real leg?

You're talking like a dualist, which is basically a position of religiosity, yet you've spent much of this thread deriding religion.

Materialism dictates that consciousness originates in the mind. The mind is merely a data processing system. Ergo, AI is of course capable of developing consciousness.

---

No, I'm just demonstrating that I have a slightly open mind for a materialist. Just leaving the door open a tiny fraction for the mysteries of consciousness. I'm not letting just anything in.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ash

No, I'm just demonstrating that I have a slightly open mind for a materialist. Just leaving the door open a tiny fraction for the mysteries of consciousness. I'm not letting just anything in.

---

And what would stop AI from one day accessing, or exposing, these same mysteries of consciousness?

Nothing, if you believe that humans are merely lumps of meat equipped with hugely limited data processing systems. But you don't think that. You think humans are something more than this. You're just not prepared to say what that is, presumably because it would make you sound like a god-botherer.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Monty92

And what would stop AI from one day accessing, or exposing, these same mysteries of consciousness?

Nothing, if you believe that humans are merely lumps of meat equipped with hugely limited data processing systems. But you don't think that. You think humans are something more than this. You're just not prepared to say what that is, presumably because it would make you sound like a god-botherer.

---

No. Metaphysics <> GodBothery.

I have been arguing against the concept of omnipotent monotheism, which is not the same as speculating that the universe may contain rules we haven't worked out yet, that go beyond the materialist model of understanding. There's a long distance between that and the spaghetti monster.

If consciousness is material, then a machine may attain it one day, but as I said, we don't know what it is or how it works. A 'thinking' machine is one thing, self-awareness and the consciousness is something else.

I find the dog analogy poor tbh. It is absurd, as dogs did not create men. Also is not our instinct to wipe out those we perceive to be a threat linked to our evolution over millions of years of desperate, grubby survival? An AI we construct with no history of competition would not necessarily think like us.

There is, of course a whole sub-genre of Sci-Fi dealing with exactly these questions, from A.C Clark to Terminator and Blade Runner.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Burney

The woodlouse is as capable of conceptualising ‘evidence’ relating to us as we are of conceptualising evidence relating to a God, a. That’s the point: God laughs at our pathetic attempts to understand Him.

---

I've addressed both of these points already. And others - yet my carefully crafted comments are callously and continually ignored until the thing goes full circle and we're back to where we started.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ash

I'm grateful to Monty now for bringing AI into this thread because we are now comparing three types of intelligence. One of which is real, empirically experienced by all, measurable in some ways, and with the whole of history to analyse it's outputs for good and ill.

The other two are both hypothetical, and at opposite extremes in different directions from the one real intelligence we know. One might one day come into being as something other than a conjuring trick (which contemporary AI is), the other has apparently always been there and is what we project a fantasy extrapolation of ourselves onto, bestowing it with any and all super-human powers we can imagine.

It is not lack of imagination or an excess of arrogance that drives my position, but a lack of evidence. (We could speculate about alien or animal intelligence too but ultimately to no end)

---

But the fact that you are looking for evidence suggests you lack the imagination needed to realize that in theological matters, evidence is not required.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ash

No. Metaphysics <> GodBothery.

I have been arguing against the concept of omnipotent monotheism, which is not the same as speculating that the universe may contain rules we haven't worked out yet, that go beyond the materialist model of understanding. There's a long distance between that and the spaghetti monster.

If consciousness is material, then a machine may attain it one day, but as I said, we don't know what it is or how it works. A 'thinking' machine is one thing, self-awareness and the consciousness is something else.

I find the dog analogy poor tbh. It is absurd, as dogs did not create men. Also is not our instinct to wipe out those we perceive to be a threat linked to our evolution over millions of years of desperate, grubby survival? An AI we construct with no history of competition would not necessarily think like us.

There is, of course a whole sub-genre of Sci-Fi dealing with exactly these questions, from A.C Clark to Terminator and Blade Runner.

---

But the dog analogy is just one example of why AI may decide to wipe us out. Another could be that they're basically like autistic humans who don't understand nuance and may *accidently* respond recklessly to benign instructions. So, for example, say we told an AI to cure cancer. Their solution to this may be to kill every human that carries a cancer-mutating gene.

So yes, of course the relationship between dogs and humans and humans and AI is radically different. But the lack of evolutionary history does not obviate the risk that AI will consider humans to be an existential threat.

I've no idea what self-awareness has to do with anything. You really think humans have self-awareness and, say, a woodlouse doesn't?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by World's End Stella

But the fact that you are looking for evidence suggests you lack the imagination needed to realize that in theological matters, evidence is not required.

---

I'm not imaginative enough to be so gullible as to believe that, for example, The Prophet ascended to heaven on a flying horse or some such and that's why Islam should own Jerusalem?

Shame on me for being so unimaginative as to swallow any old utter crap.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Monty92

I've no idea what self-awareness has to do with anything. You really think humans have self-awareness and, say, a woodlouse doesn't?

---

Neither of us know what it is like to be a woodlouse. Although you will in your next life, obv. :guffaw:

I don't believe they experience consciousness as we do. Ours is tied up with our symbolic and abstract thought, I expect.

Presumably you believe that your phone has consciousness. Why not, by your reckoning?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ash

Neither of us know what it is like to be a woodlouse. Although you will in your next life, obv. :guffaw:

I don't believe they experience consciousness as we do. Ours is tied up with our symbolic and abstract thought, I expect.

Presumably you believe that your phone has consciousness. Why not, by your reckoning?

---

I don't believe that AI (or my phone) has consciousness. I believe it has the capacity to develop consciousness. All that the phenomenon of consciousness requires is a self-organising system like the brain’s physical structure. Current machines come up short, but there's no reason at all to think they always will.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ash

I'm not imaginative enough to be so gullible as to believe that, for example, The Prophet ascended to heaven on a flying horse or some such and that's why Islam should own Jerusalem?

Shame on me for being so unimaginative as to swallow any old utter crap.

---

Ah but you've moved the goalposts there, Ash. Belief in a deity is one thing, adherence to particular form of organized religion and its set of beliefs is quite another.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by World's End Stella

Ah but you've moved the goalposts there, Ash. Belief in a deity is one thing, adherence to particular form of organized religion and its set of beliefs is quite another.

---

I don't think that's really true at all.

The distinction is between belief that there's stuff we don't know or understand and belief in a deity.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Monty92

I don't think that's really true at all.

The distinction is between belief that there's stuff we don't know or understand and belief in a deity.

---

That is another distinction - it does not preclude the distinction between those who believe in a deity but who refuse to acknowledge a particular organized religion and those who see the two as going hand in hand.