I meant in age/ years- Rik: who cares about that. ? Just curious. well if you're gonna claim old-fart-hood, fess up. * spcman is 35 I think if you are in your 70's to 80's then you are old. <|killjoy|> that's pre-dead hehehehe <_Sweetie> hehehe * BiffLoman is older than spcman I am 32 wow, someone older than me. kewl. Rik is 45 incase anyone wants to know <_Sweetie> 36 and counting * N0MAD is depressed because he is getting WAY too close to 30... * spcman is *not* an old-fart. 30 is just a number in base ten. <|killjoy|> 39 and counting backwards Sweetie: have you progeny? use base 16 instead. fr8- a mere younster :) * BiffLoman is getting depressed because he is getting way too far from 30 * _Sweetie nods 2 almost clones * Rikstafer is a young 45 :) Sweetie has hamsters as well :) Then you can be 1e years old. Sweetie: sweet! :-) A teenager! <_Sweetie> hahaha yes I still have hamsters Wow... I'm 1b years old... barely a teen! :) <_Sweetie> I don't mind getting older it does not bother me either I don't mind getting older. I mind getting older without women in my life. <_Sweetie> how else are we suppose to DO anything <_Sweetie> the alternative is NOT for me spcman: ahh, don't worry, they are all crazy anyway ;-) aparently. <_Sweetie> thats right <_Sweetie> err um I mean I shouldn't speak for the others sweetie! <_Sweetie> whats with the wires efex? <_Sweetie> my typing is suffering...bananas are slippry Cant we talk about something except age....I hate that subject /;) <_Sweetie> awww come on mary I am listening * spcman is trying to devise a way to reach a billion years old. And not smell bad. Age does not matter, unless it interferes with wisdom- <_Sweetie> hmmm a billion would get boring slow down your perception of time _Sweetie> I'll settle for 110 <_Sweetie> but I intend to make it a minimum of 96 I dont want to live to be 110.... I will be alive until I die. I don't care after that. I think living to an old age is over rated <_Sweetie> hehe freight * mary^ agrees with freightoi death just happens. no need to spend too much time planning for it. <_Sweetie> yet we spend a good part of our lives thinkning about it well if you could build reality anyway you wanted, you'd never get bored. just burn me up and put me in a jar. Thats right fr8 <_Sweetie> hehehe Nor would you get bored if you could travel the universe. <_Sweetie> recently in here the conversation was similar and we discussed some alternative burial plans <_Sweetie> :) burying bodies is a waste of space. Just shoot me into space and let me float around forever we should eat them, solve some of the hunger problems in the world <_Sweetie> now you can even pay to have your ashes (actually a few ounces) set into orbit spcman It's my world- I deserve the space :) You can have my part BiffLoman here is a question to ponder, if you transfer yourself into a computer just before death will you still be alive? Assume for the sake of argument that the computer can replicate every detail needed and create a perfect clone of you (and fix your cause of death ofcourse). yummmy Burial details are done for the sake of the living, not the dead... rik, that is until you're forgoten and they dig you up to make room for a housing development. <_Sweetie> exactly NOMAD NOMAD, agreed, otherwise there would be no need for those ornate caskets fr8, thaT deserves a simple "NO" <_Sweetie> hehe they dug a tunnel for a train in Calgary under a forgotten cemetary, all the bodies started dropping out Rik: why not? that's got to be a drag. <_Sweetie> oh no It's raining corpses. Rik: rethink the experiment alittle, you walk into a box, a replicator. two of you walk out. which one is you? both em <_Sweetie> hehe fr8: From whose viewpoint would "alive" be? I like this experiment. NOMAD: that is the ultimate question Here's another one. fr8, First off- No computer can hold me- Rik: dont get irrelevant. didn't they do a star trek TNG about that, where Ryker was replicated If you quantize time, you can find points in existance where nothing happens, then the next instance all animation occurs. So are you dead during that time? HI skyman if so, do you need memory to know your not dead? What if you memories are changed each instance? spcman: if time is quantized then you would not be able to find points between time unless you existed out side of time. ?? wait Exactly... Is it your POV of self-awareness? If there are "two" of you does that POV diverge? Who is "looking" through the other if not? You could have been a different person one instant ago, and would never know it. HI sweetie, I mean. <_Sweetie> and what if I am a ghost err poltergeist? freight, I'm looking at this from a software point of view. <_Sweetie> :) Sky anyway, if you walk into a box and two come out, and lets further assume that the box must unassemble you then reassemble you to do the replication. Which one is you or is the question relevant? both are. The onlything missing is sharing of memory. this is great stuff. well, all memory is identical from the point of creation where it diverges. so from this are we to conclude that the concept of self is realy just a convenience? That it is not a unique property of a being but rather just some emergent property of a collection of objects? could be both. That's the same question I've always wondered about this whole Star Trek transporter bit... What if the original, "real" you died a horrible, burning death in the disassembly, and what comes out is a duplicate, including self-awareness and memory, but is not a CONTINUATION of who walked into the transporter? well, if self is split then it is not unique NOMAD: thats how life is in the transporter, * _Sweetie hears a child...brb I think about this when I think about being a machine entity distributed over space. they have even gone back and brought people back via a transporter. with multiple machine elements making up the whole. I can not believe I am using star trek as an example. shoot me now. If you cut a copy of yourself to go to some distant place where realtime communication is'nt possible, there are two of you. There is a book that deals with this and related topics. It is "The mind's I" by Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett. BANG But when you're reunited, you share memories of what happened, then you refuse. *ouch* bang? To a third party observer there would be no difference, but I think they are really toasting the people and just duplicating them so well you can't tell the difference... she shot me NOMAD: hehehe, there is no difference So you hope if you are the one about to be atomized... Sorry about that fr8....but you asked for it /:) so this brings us to our final point. Is information really the only thing that matters? That all we are can be reduced to information. understood. Here's one that always bothers me... What does it "feel" like to cease to exist.... Well, unless you wanna get spiritual, yeah. NOMAD: you do it every night No feelings of death well that was part of my point about quantizing existance. All the stuff in us can be quantized and so, measured. So consciousness isn't fluid. It's discrete stuff. It can look like a movie made up of separate frames. and if we can be separate frames, can you splice in new pasts. or better yet, human comprehension <_killjoy|> anything religious No of course the backup position to that is "I don't comprehend your example, present one that makes sense..." if we are just information then what the hell is the ostensive? of course everything I wrote was not seen. spcman: repost now I have to look up ostensive. well that was part of my point about quantizing existance. All the stuff in us can be quantized and so, measured. So consciousness is'nt fluid. It's descrete stuff. It can look like a movie made up of seperate frames. and if we can be seperate frames, can you splice in new pasts. ostensive is the experience of existance that preceeds interpretation. sorry about the flood. hmmm <_killjoy|> ostensive=ostentatious+defensive *thwap* <_Sweetie> dammit slow down!!!! spcman: when you see blue that is an ostensive experience. <_Sweetie> hehehehe Well if I understand your intent, interpretation of experience is'nt instant and actually takes many seconds. Well, my position is thus: "I yam what I yam, and that's all that I yam..." Like when you hear a song and know you like it, but it takes you 10 seconds to realize which one it really is. I can do it in about 1/2 a second ;-) <_Sweetie> I can name that tune in 8 notes <_Sweetie> ;) Well sometimes when I hear a song, I know the name, I know all that stuff, but my full awareness of how I feel about it takes longer. noticebly. I've noticed that memory of most things is like that. maybe it's cause I'm an old fart. hrmm, I spose that even if you reduced your existance to purely information you would need to reconstitute it in reality to actually experience. This is the core "can digital computers think" conundrum. * _Sweetie wishes happy dreams to all of you A purely digital computer may not do consciouness justice, but there are hybrid computer possibilities. nite sweetie * _Sweetie grabs her teddy and heads off to DreamLand... <_Sweetie> night freight night sweeti4 sweetie <_Sweetie> night mary <_Sweetie> night spc <_Sweetie> gozz night EVERYONE I for one am convinced esp and other stuff similar exists. I suspect consciousness is coupled to otherstuff as well using things we don't understand yet. spcman: well, the theoretical question is important. can reality be reconstituted in an algorithmic machine. I.e., is reality ultimately reduceable to an algorithmic system or.if not, can we atleast approximate it well enough to create sentience. but a device to hold a consciousness is still consistant I believe, since in our natural form, we are still just biochemical machines. I am convinced that other stuff besides esp exists. ;-) instead of? spcman: the question is whether or not a computing machine can do it or it you need wet-ware I think it can, but not as well as a machine where quantum error can be introduce. Cause I suspect stuff, is coupled. seen Muad_Dib <|PythonS|> mary^: Muad_Dib was last here 2 days, 4 hours, 15 minutes ago spcman: quantum mechanics is an algorithmic system. anything you claim with it must be done algorithmically. It is, therefore, an insufficient theory to address the problem at hand. but I believe sentience is achievable with a purely digital machine. spcman: why do you think that? how can pure uncertainty be algorithmic? well let's define sentience. Does that include self awareness? spcman: quantum mechanics gives you a number for the prbability of an event. once you know that number, or more correctly, the distribution, then you have all the information you need. hey mary Hi chucky the number is obtained via an algorithmic process. How are you tonight? freight, there are other aspects of the science of quantum physics that are unexplained. tired, just got in from crazy bitch date Like why things can couple. quantum mechanics never addresses the issue of stochastic processes, i.e., is nature really random or is it so complex we just have to give up. spcman: quantum physics is a theory, not a science. Why particles can communicate faster than light. spcman: yeah, it is a postulate, an axiom if you will, based on observation why stuff exists but only if it gets interacted with. I was refering to the EPR experiment. You didn't enjoy your *date* chucky? spcman: it is not clear that particles communicate faster than light I know Well it's pretty clear to many. it was ok for the first few seconds True, you have to assume that the defining of polarity on one side forces a communication to the otherside. hehehe...went down from there ..huh? But other explanation get weirder still. spcman: ummm, not really, while the particles do seem coupled, it does not mean that extractable information is being transfered. my parachute didn't open Oh, I was'nt meaning to imply it as usable. All I ment was that things do couple that way. Action at a distance. If it can happen externally in a lab, it can happen in our brains. What would be the mechanics of that? spcman: well, the problem is that bell's theorem is not quite shown to go either way. Maybe it takes a neural net to extract useful information from such systems. Darn the bad luck Chucky i think they shot that dog at the end of ole yeller. spcman: no, it is theoretically impossible to extract info from hyperluminal systems, to do so would destroy the coupling. And in effect, the only way to verify that the communication was accurate, is to actually communicate another way. So although ftl is'nt obvious, communication can occur, even if you have to figure out that you did in fact communicate long after the fact. spcman: accd to QM the information can NOT be extracted from the system It's theoretically impossible. Does'nt mean the theory is right. My point isn't to debate this stuff at this level, all I'm saying is there are a lot of weird things we see but don't understand. Action at a distance etc. spcman: ofcourse not, but it is the most succesful theory invented. you would be hard pressed to show otherwise. until such time then we should prolly assume it is correct until we figure out how to disprove it. Well...I need to get to bed....Goodnight chucky, fr8,spcman ...have a good night I'm not assuming it's correct, I'm sayin life is weird. HEY!!! It's 2:29 (central) you people get a beer and lighten the fuck up!! I mean hyperboliclly. night mary later mary * mary^ waves to everyone spcman: quantum physics is not a theory about reality, it is a theory ment to predict reality. That means that it must ultimately depend on assumptions. However, weather we understand why it does what it does, the theory still predicts what WILL happen. nite mary freight, I used the term quantum mechanics very loosly. Only to put us in the ball park. and it does it extremely well. I don't want to argue definitions. but semantics is fun! :-) I find it so frustrating. :) And me an Ai person, does'nt seem to fit does it? :) heh, but a necessary evil ? Well I think in fuzzinesses. I only force stuff to definitions when I'm ready to code. spcman: that makes communication difficult AI= Artificial Intelligence. freight, it can. I see stuff like a painting. I dont like AI, I prefer SI. :-) Whole systems like that. I tried explaining this revelation I had the other night and failed miserably.. Synthetic INtelligence. Hmm. that works. Synthetic Intellegence. Just like the real thing, just made in the lab :-) i once saw a beam of light hit a hole in a wall and come out the other side as a ball of light, Nat king Cole, and an AMC Grimlin. freight, I think I've found a way to form thoughts as a language. Fuzzy of course. that's the revelation I had the other day. One I've had before but each time it's better and I see more stuff. write it down man ;-) not yet. When I get my bot working and some simple behavior stuff running, I'll find ways to solidify it. kewl. But imagine the problem of routing cable, say for a welder. Try running it around a corner into a room. You need a few bots to do that. I wanna code a proggie that generates a society and the citizens begin to worship me :-) how do they know what role to play? This thing I thought of allows them to simply fall into roles. hehe. I just want these little guys to make stuff for me. ahh, the do not, the roles evolve. I.e., I am interested in the underpinnings of reality that lead to these expressions of behavior. I say little but some of them will way several tons. hmm I'm interested in doing stuff. The esoterics will arrive later. hehehehe, I like to do stuff too I was focusing on the mechanics of consciouness. I am esoteric by nature :-) I found a way to express it by finding problems in ship building to solve. :) hrmmmm I have seen no one in AI try to generate a theory of consciouness mechanics. It's frustrating. I'm like the only one! :) hi all This guy I know in #ai is pretty bright. He does'nt do that either. #ai? hmmm It's like they think if they make a really good memory system of some kind that consciouness will just emerge.